Ants and Giants
by WordyAF
Summary: **READ "ALL THROUGH THE NIGHT" INSTEAD. THIS IS A ROUGH DRAFT** When Spot Conlon is taken hostage and forced to choose between life with a gang or putting himself through a horrifying competition designed to test the bounds of his sanity and humanity, it's up to Marta, Racetrack and the boys of Brooklyn to save him before the gauntlet rips him apart at the seams.
1. Chapter 1

_A/N: Hey! This is just a little one shot that I thought up. It might end up as a two shot, but I make no promises. Let me know what you think. As always, if you recognize it, it ain't mine. If its someone new, they're mine but I don't make any profit from allowing them to interact with the Newsies. On with the show!_

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He slipped quietly down the stairs in stockinged feet, his red suspenders hanging down his sides. His eyes were shadowed and heavy with exhaustion but he couldn't sleep. The burden of being the leader did that at times. Some nights, the weight of the decisions he had to make made rest impossible, but others, like tonight, something much older than responsibility clawed at his brain. He'd gone to sleep hungry so many times in his sixteen years that the loud rumbling of his stomach was easily ignored while he lay in the dark surrounded by his boys. The silence felt so lonely and desolate in that bunk room all of a sudden that he had to get out and was pulling his pants on and walking out the door before he really knew what he was doing. He knew she would be awake in her room at the back of the main floor. She never slept much, it was one of the few things that time never changed. He padded as silently as he could down the plank floors, knowing where to step to avoid the loudest creaks. He should know them, he'd been walking these floors for more than ten years. No one, no one but her, had been there longer than him.

Sure enough, the soft glow of lamplight frayed out from under the door and he paused to listen to her hum to herself. She only hummed when she was sewing, claiming that it was the only way to keep herself from falling asleep during the tedious task. He always liked to listen to her sing, it was the sound that soothed him to sleep as a small boy when nightmares haunted him. She would wake to his whimpers and cries and begin to sing softly, never acknowledging that she knew it was him, but comforting him all the same. He woke many times during the years she was in charge to the sound of her voice soothing other small, tormented souls, but always felt like maybe she knew he was listening too, taking comfort in the quiet alto voice wafting through the quiet lodging house.

"I can see your feet you know," her voice called out. He smiled, of course she knew he was there, years didn't change a person so much that she would ever let her guard down. He pushed the door and poked his head him, smiling at her mischievously. She stopped him with a frown, "Price of entry is one holey sock for me to mend." She pointed at his foot, where his big toe peaked out of his ragged brown sock.

"I think this ones a lost cause, Marta," he answered, sheepishly shuffling his feet back and forth against her worn rag rug, avoiding her hazel eyes. He couldn't look at her, she would see what he was after in a heartbeat, she always knew him better than he knew himself. "There's more darn to it than sock. If you patch it much more, it wont fit me foot anymore."

"Check the basket there for a new one then." She nodded her head to the little basket at her feet. "The fearless leader needs socks on his feet same as everyone else." He dug through the scores of socks in every shape color and size, all washed and mended to be recirculated as their fallen brothers made it to her wash and mend pile. She was always good at things like that, those little things that maybe the boys took for granted, but that made them feel cared about all the same. She watched him dig with a soft smirk on her tired face. Her skin was still fair, despite years of her youth being spent in the sun and grime of the city. Her peaches and cream skin was improved, not marred, by the hundreds and thousands of light freckles that adorned it. "While you're at it, check the bin for some new pants. That pair is too short for you; it looks like you're waiting for a flood and I doubt those have anything left to let down in them."

He looked up at her, his blonde hair falling over his still roguishly boyish face and scowled. Those eyes, sometimes steely and grey and sometimes the lightest of blues blazed at her audacity. Who was she to give him orders? But she just laughed, her pale cheeks pinking up. "That look doesn't work on me, Spot Conlon! You might be able to scare your hooligans like that but not me. Now go. Longer pants. NOW." She gave him her own cool, steady look, daring him to cross her again. Her dark brown hair was still twisted up loosely on her head, but the length of her day was showing by how much of it fell around her face and neck in whisps.

He trudged over to the pile of mended clothes and found a pair of pants that draped all the way to his toes when he held them up to his hips. "There. Happy?" he grumbled. "Damn woman."

She was out of her seat and standing menacingly close to him before he turned all the way around. "You watch how you talk to me Kieran Conlon," she warned, her voice suddenly low and soft, a mere murmur, reminding him of exactly who she once was. "I take a lot of shit from you and your boys without a word, but YOU don't disrespect me." Her voice, the threat in her eye, reminded him that the worn but still fashionable cranberry colored skirt, the clean shirt and the trim shirt waist might make her look like a respectable middle class lady, she might wear her hair piled on her head instead of down her back in a braid but she was still Kisser underneath it all. She might just run the lodging house now, but once upon a time, she was the right hand woman of the leader of Brooklyn. Back then, she would never have scrubbed floors or made soup, but she could always be depended on for a kind ear and a scrap of bread in her pocket. That was back before Spot Conlon was equal parts legend and boy. Back when Kieran Conlon was a runty five year old with big blue eyes that always looked hungry. Hungry for food, attention, money, family…everything.

He was so tiny that he barely came up to the bawdy newsgirl's waist the day he toddled up to the Distribution Center in tears because someone stole the dime he found on the street that he was going to buy his first papers with. She knew he was different right then, because she had nine and ten year old streetwise kids who would have found a dime on the street and run straight to see the flickers or to a sweet shop. To see a dime and decide to try to double it before he worried about filling his tiny stomach proved that he had brains in his little head. She pulled him over to Scatter that day and handed the kid twenty of her seventy papers. "Got me a new selling partner, Scat," she said proudly, patting the little boy on the head. Scatter, not one to ever question Kisser's judgement, just nodded and smiled at the kid.

"Stick close to Kisser, den Kid," the leader said. "She'll teach you your place, but don't get mouthy. We don't call her Kisser for nothing. You see a Newsie in Brooklyn missing a front tooth, its probably her fault." He winked at the little boy and grinned, showing his own gapped smile before sauntering away. Kieran later learned that Scat and Kisser were rarely apart, seamlessly leading Brooklyn as a team.

The woman and they boy stood in her private quarters still facing off in steely silence, grey eyes against hazel. Grey dropped to the floor first, "Sorry Kisser," he mumbled. "I didn't mean it." He rocked on his heels and nervously picked at his cuticles.

She stood, all of the barbs in her stance dropping and she smiled as she realized that they were the same height now. She was always tall for a girl, and he was just sixteen, so she knew he still could have a fair few inches to grow. She put her hands on his shoulders and roped him back into her steady gaze, "Nevah evah forget where you came from kid," she said, the Brooklyn drawl coming out thick even though she normally kept it carefully under wraps. "You and I know bettah than most what can happen when ya let yaself get too big to remember where ya came from and why ya on top." His eyes grew wide and she could see the starved urchin he used to be. She affectionately ran her hand down his cheek and pushed his shaggy hair out of his face, smiling at the way he leaned into her hand like an eager pup before he could stop himself. When she spoke again, she had her street talk under control, "I wont let it happen all over again, so you watch yourself, Spot."

He shook himself out of the stupor she put him in and flopped down onto the floor, crossing his long legs Indian style. "I ain't gonna end up like Scat, Marta."

"Aren't you?" she asked, gracefully lowering herself back into the rocking chair and picking up a shirt to begin mending. "Can you really say that with all of this 'King of Brooklyn,' dockside throne bullshit?" Her eyebrow raised piously, but she never looked up from the shirt.

"That reputation keeps me boys safe!" he snapped. "Ain't no one in New York gonna mess with Brooklyn because if they mess with me boys, they mess with me." Again, turned that signature Spot Conlon stare on her again and again she smiled sadly and shook her head. _Oh to be an arrogant teenage boy_ , she thought.

"Maybe so," she answered, looking back to her work, "but reputations don't just send messages to other newsies, Spot. You have to worry about the messages being sent outside your little bubble, out in places where there are people who think that brutal, cold and calculating are wonderful traits for their new recruits. Do you want to be a respectable man someday or a common hood your whole life?"

He picked at the hole in his sock, refusing to answer her. Of course he didn't want to be a hood, but he was a leader, natural born. Everyone said so. He couldn't go back to being some underling. He was raised for this life, raised by the woman lecturing him, to be this way, and now she seemed to want him to throw it all away. He'd had his share of thoughts about it, though. Being leader was a lonely life of fake friendships and he'd seen the consequences of it last summer during the strike. This grafters that he saved Jack-Boy and the 'Hattan crew from, one of them was Scat, he was sure of it. Scat was his idol for his first two years as a newsie, that face was indelibly marked on his young brain, and that face had come at him with a club without a second thought. He never told Marta when they returned because he protected her the same way she had protected him when he was little, and for the same reason. He wouldn't be responsible for her already broken heart being further shattered by the knowledge that they boy she loved was now a ruthless thug, a fist for hire. If he thought about it hard enough, he would see that she clearly already knew this, but he preferred the idea that he was protecting her from it. He didn't like to think that she knew that a man she nearly lost her life for ended up taking money to beat the very kids he once protected.

He looked up at her from his place on her floor, "What should I do?" His voice was small and lost, not at all the arrogant bark the boys upstairs were used to hearing. She was the first girl, not even the first girl, the first _person_ he could remember loving him in any way. The first person who gave a damn about him and thought he could be something more than just another drain on society, and as a small boy, he had loved her fiercely for it.

"I can't tell you what to do," she answered simply, gently tugging thread through the eye of a needle.

He snorted, "Really? Never stopped you before."

She tried to hide her amusement behind a scowl but failed miserably, managing to look faintly like she sucked the juice out of a lemon instead. After a deep breath she explained herself, "You have to decide what you want. I can't pick for you. If you want to be the immortal King Of Brooklyn, then you change nothing. You keep going exactly as you are and hope for the best. Hope that you can find someone willing to give you a job when the time comes. Hope that you have the gumption, or even the choice to say no should the big boys come looking for you to keep playing these games. But, if you don't like the idea of having to turn against everything you know, everything you believe in because the man slipping coins in your pocket says you believe otherwise, then you slow your roll and calm your swagger a bit. You soak who you have to to keep your boys safe, but otherwise you keep your nose clean and save your pennies so that when its your time to go you can go anywhere you like, free as a bird, and escape this hellhole."

He sat in silence, mulling over her speech. "Did they give him a choice?" he asked quietly.

"No," she answered, swiping a hand across her eyes and furrowing her delicate brow. "It was join or be beaten within an inch of his life. If he lived, he was welcome to live as he pleased. He chose to live and fight another day."

"Why didn't you go?"

"Go where? Away?" she asked, bending her head back to the shirt in her lap, avoiding his piercing gaze.

"With him," he answered. "You were both the leaders, why didn't you go with him?"

For a long while she din't answer, pretending to be very absorbed in choosing a patch for the elbow of the shirt that she had yet to put a single stitch into. He looked back down at his hands and chewed his fingernails, black with printer's ink, to the nubs. "I loved him too much to watch that, Spot," she finally whispered, her voice wavering with emotion long since bottled up and fermented over the course of time. "I couldn't watch him destroy himself. It was terrible enough to know he was doing it, but I couldn't watch the light in him go out slowly. It was too cruel. And I couldn't save him. He wouldn't let me."

"I'm not gonna be like him, Marta," he said, his voice fiercely determined. "I won't let you down."

She smiled sadly again, and he couldn't understand how something that was supposed to mean she was happy could possibly look so sad. "You can't do it for me, or for Brooklyn or for a girl, when you find one who you want to stick around, you have to do it for yourself, Kieran." She was suddenly too tired to make another stitch. Her eyes were blurring and her shoulders stooped. "You have to make yourself proud enough to carry you through until someone else notices the man that you are, the way that Trots did when he tapped you to be his successor. The way that I did when I trained you starting when you were five. You have the same light in you that I always loved about Scat, the light that makes people who need a leader gravitate towards you. Maybe thats why I was always so fond of you. There will come a time when someone else will see it and know like I do that you are bound for great things if only you can be patient enough to use it for the right things, and not the things that come along first."

"He always said you could make a guy feel like an ant and a giant all in the same sentence." He smiled sadly, remembering Scat's Jack-o-lantern grin as he poked fun at his girl's ability to wax poetic.

"All men are both ants and giants, it all depends on where you're looking at them from," she answered, enjoying that he he still came to her with his problems. "Finding the right perspective and acting like a man is the key."

He shook his head, his bangs falling in his face again. "Did you always talk in riddles and I just forgot about it, or are you gong crazy in your old age?" He had no time to duck the swat that she lashed out with, walloping him up side his head.

"Old, my ass, I can still kick your teeth in, little boy!" she grumbled. He cackled wildly on the floor rubbing his skull ruefully as she cleaned up her sewing supplies. The lamp oil was low and in the dimming light she could see from the mantle clock that it was nearly one in the morning. He wiped the tears from his eyes as he stood, and she gave him a good once over. He was still scrawny, still angry, still hungry just as he was when he was the little boy permanently attached to the pocket of her trousers. Together, they had perfected his rendition of "*cough cough* Buy me last pape, Mistah," as well as "Please, Lady, Papa says I can't go home till I sells all me papes!" His sweet face and striking eyes were like gold. Now, his face wasn't sweet anymore, but it was growing handsome as manhood began to take hold, carving edges out of the softness of childhood. Those eyes though, they never changed. She stood, and placed her basket neatly next to her chair, but then cocked her head to one side and stared at him thoughtfully. "You were prowling outside the door earlier when I caught you. Did you ned something?"

"Nope," he answered, smirking, "I fell asleep for years listening to you sing or talk to Scatter. Sometimes, it helps me sleep just to hear your voice before I lay down." His face went stony as he realized what he just admitted. "But I'll deny it and tell everyone you're going senile if that leaves this room."

"Senile!" she laughed. "I'm not even thirty, and you act like I'm some old crone!" She had to admit than when she was sixteen, thirty did seem endlessly old. Thirty was an age where people had jobs and families, it was a lifetime away from selling papes and running territories. "Your reputation is safe with me, no one will know that Spot Conlon is a big softy."

"Shaddup," he growled, throwing his new pants and new sock over his narrow shoulder.

She pulled him quickly into a tight embrace, "Sleep well, Little Spot," she whispered in his ear.

"Night, Marta," he answered, hesitantly returning the embrace at first, but then sinking into the warmth and comfort of it. She still smelled the same, like she had all those years ago, when she would tuck him in and her braid would fall into his face and he would drink in her smell so he could fall asleep. Tomorrow, when she woke the boys, they would have no inclination that Spot and Miss Marta knew each other beyond being the leader and the house manager. They kept their shared past a secret, for the sake of Brooklyn. But, for the moment, they soaked up a little bit of the affection that they were both still so hungry for after all those years.


	2. Chapter 2

_A/N: So about that thing where I said this was a one shot, I'm a dirty rotten liar. I've got at least one more installment in store. Its never going to be some great epic, but I can certainly guarantee one more and maybe even two. As always, I don't own Spot, just Marta and Scatter._

XxXxXxX

She strategically planned her week so that market day immediately followed the morning that she deep cleaned the boys' washroom. After a hellish morning that left her feeling like no amount of bathing would ever convince her she was clean again, she stepped out the back door of the lodging house and into the fresh air. Sure, it still smelled like trash, fish, river water and a certain hint of something unidentifiably sour, but it was still a step up from the distinctly brown, sweaty, fermented smell of pure boy.She shuddered thinking of the horrors she faced only a few short hours beforehand, but she shook off the disgust and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders before stepping out of the alleyway and into the sunlight.

Being in the market made her feel like herself again. She wanted to yell headlines as shoulders brushed against hers and other boots trampled her toes. Out among people was always where Kisser felt the most alive, she was a natural people person, a charmer. She pushed her way through the crowds, smiling and making conversation with acquaintances and strangers alike until she reached the Mercantile where she ordered flour, baking powder and salt to be delivered later that day. From there she headed to the butcher for soup bones and lard. Back out in the streets, she picked through the stalls, more for the people than the produce, but still ended up with a large braid of onions, a few cabbages and a bunch of turnips in her large market basket with her soup bones.

Three shrill staccato whistle notes followed by a long low note cut through the din of the bustling marketplace and nearly stopped her in her tracks before she remembered herself. The message was clear to the person who created the code, watch your back, but she still had to smile to herself that her codes were still in use. She beamed with pride as she kept moving with her head a little higher, keeping her ear tuned behind her to try to catch her tail. She whistled a return to her bird, wondering how long he'd been having her followed and how she never noticed. The looping melody she whistled instructed her bird to stick close and keep his or her eyes open.

Spot was the best lookout she ever had. His quiet way and sharp eyes saw things that other people didn't see. They were opposites, the two of them, which was why she needed him and the others as lookouts. Her brain occupied itself with the people around her. She was forever talking and laughing, solving problems by speaking and doing. It was when she got quiet that her boys knew something was wrong. When her voice dipped to a near whisper and dropped half an octave, they knew they were in deep shit. Spot, on the other hand, was silent until something was wrong, at which point he exploded into a whirlwind of sound and fury. It made him a fantastic lookout and also a fierce fighter. He sold his papers and caught all sorts of things that she never would have known about because no one knew he was there. His nearly silent feet and small stature made him invisible on the busy streets.

It was on a cool spring day that Spot gave her the news that started her life, her life that had only been in her control for a few years, on a crash course to adulthood. She was selling, yelling out the headlines and crashing into people on purpose as she walked for no other reason than because she liked the extra interaction with people. Talking with and walking among other people, after so much time alone as a child, helped her think and sort out her feelings. Her brain worked better in the din of the busiest squares. It was a dance that no one understood but her, choreographed to the sound of the streets of her Brooklyn. Headlines, hawkers, drunks and whores with a bass beat of feet pounding cobblestone and crates and barrels hitting wagon beds. He used a low note followed by a long upsweeping note to alert her when he had news for her and when she heard it she stopped her dance and turned into the nearest alley. Seemingly materializing out of nothing, the slight seven year old stood before her, those eyes gleaming out of the gloom. "What'cha got for me, Kid?" she asked, swatting the brim of his oversized cap so that it fell over his eyes.

He scowled up at her and righted his cap. "Bones is getting ready to leave for a factory job, he's gonna tell Scat later this week," he answered. His voice had taken on some bite and hardness in the two years since she took him under her wing, his face too. No longer did she look up at her wide eyed, he scowled and glared now. "Rustler and Duke had it out over some girl named Maureen at the Dove Parlour. Duke won and Rustler lost a tooth." He grinned, showing the boy he really was as she rolled her eyes at the stupidity of the older boys fighting over a girl paid to give them the time of day. Spot stalled then, his face pinching as he scuffed his boot back and forth against the cobblestones.

"Out with it, Spot," she demanded. "I ain't got all day here."

"Some big goons cornered Scat in an alley off Broad St. They roughed him up and said they were coming for him and he had a week to decide."

All the blood drained from her face. Spot, didn't joke, he didn't really seem to understand the concept, so she knew he wasn't messing with her for kicks. She wouldn't put it past the seven year old to lie, but he'd never fleeced her before. "Tell me everything," she whispered. "I want to know what he said, what they were wearing, what they looked liken and how they talked. I want to know how they fought and what they had for lunch. Tell me even damn thing you remember, Spot." He grinned eerily, loving when she challenged him like this with recalling every detail.

She sighed, hating those memories, hating this subdued, older person she became and adjusted her market basket and sauntered back towards the river and the lodging house. She no longer danced with the unsuspecting people on the streets, but relished the little brushes with others. Her tail was close enough now that she could hear him behind her and if she only knew one thing about herself, it was that Kisser Gatcyk didn't play cat and mouse in alleys. She didn't back down from confrontation and she didn't hide behind boys and rely on them to fight her fights for her. It might have been awhile since she threw a punch, but she certainly didn't forget how to do it, but she wasn't stupid either. She turned off from the main street and abruptly stopped and dropped her parcels and whistled high-low, high-low, get help, before she turned to face the person who followed her all that way.

He was tall, broad and while his clothes weren't expensive looking they were store bought and clean. His pocket watch hung on a chain that draped from his vest button to the pocket and his bowler hat was pulled low over his eyes. "Got a message for your leader, missy," he said in a smooth baritone.

"My leader?" she asked incredulously. "Do I look like a newsboy or a thug to you? I don't have a leader, I'm just a woman running a business." He stuck her chin out and set him with a cool look from her light hazel eyes, a look that most boys and even a few men cowered under, but he just frowned.

"You know who I mean. The little King."

"If you want him, why are you here talking to me? Go tell him, I'm just the housekeeper." She spit at his feet. "I have enough rowdy newsboys to deal with without full grown men thinking they have power over me. Go bully someone else, or better yet, tell your boss to shove it up his ass and leave my boys alone."

"Big talk from such a respectable lady," he sneered.

"If they told you anything about me before they sent you out to harass me, because your bosses do know about me, then you'd know, I'm no lady. I may not look like much, but I'm at least more than some powerless flunky of a gang boss sent to bully boys into the same trap you fell into!"

His hand shot out and grabbed her right arm, expecting to incapacitate her by grabbing her dominant hand, but she surprised him with a hard left jab straight to the mouth, the move that earned her her name. His hat flew off as his head snapped back but he barely paused before throwing her against the wall with his meaty forearm across her throat. "You tell your little pipsqueak Spotty that we got our eye on him." His face was so close to hers. His dark hair fell over his forehead in tousled bangs and his deep, bottle green eyes blazed. She knew him instantly and hated herself for how her body reacted to him even though he was hurting her. The thrill that ran through her that he was touching her again was despicable and she knew it, but she didn't want it to stop even though he was slowly cutting off her air.

"Scat?" she squeaked through her constricted windpipe. He grimaced and she knew for sure it was him because even though he wasn't grinning, his jack-o-lantern teeth gave him away. His eyes widened as he drank her in and realized exactly who he was roughing up. "They didn't tell you who I was, did they." It wasn't a question. She swallowed loudly and tried to hook her thumbs under his arm. "You can't have Spot. Leave him alone." His hold loosened and she took a grateful breath in. "Still just low level muscle after all this time, Scatter? How can you ask him to do this when this is as far as you've gotten?"

"You know I can't call them off," he growled, his voice more a vibration than anything. "They want him and its my job to collect him." The sound of running feet approaching caught their attention and they met eyes. What she saw broke her heart all over again. He sounded like her Scatter, but the look in his eye was empty, there was nothing left of the boy she knew, just a hollow shell. "Meet me," he whispered raggedly in her ear before letting her go, "Meet me tonight at our place." He looked almost ashamed as he took off running and she sunk down where she stood, one hand over her mouth to try to contain the silent sobs that were forcing their way out and the other wrapped tightly around her middle as if she had been stabbed. In truth, she wasn't sure she hadn't been, it sure felt like it.

"Marta." Spot's voice was barely a whisper as he knelt in front of her. For just a moment his eyes were terrified before he caught himself and blanked them again. As her eyes started focus, she saw one of Spot's more trusted boys, a stocky, black haired boy who looked brutish and fought like an animal named Trout. She was glad it was him, because despite his sinister looks, he was one of her favorites and one she didn't mind seeing in a less than strong state. Next to him was a little boy they called Haystack, Spot's best bird. "Tell me what happened, Kisser," Spot demanded. The other boys behind him looked between one another at his use of her old name. "He hurt you? Didja see him?"

She looked up at him and wiped her eyes before whispering, "Scatter."

"Why? Why'd he go after you?" His voice was harsh and quiet.

"To warn you."

His eyes flashed dangerously and he huffed a rough "C'mon," before he roughly hauled her to her feet and barked at the other boys with him to grab her things. He shrugged out of his jacket and threw it over her shoulders before pulling her close to him with a protective arm and leading her quickly back to the lodging house. Both of them could feel the questioning eyes of Trout and Haystack on their backs as they walked. Spot was many things, but chivalrous, caring and sympathetic were not traits on that list and to see him be kind to her was eerie and disconcerting. He wasn't ever unkind to Miss Marta, but whatever he was being as he marched her home that afternoon was far from their normal view of their leader.

When they were tucked away in her room, away from the curious eyes of the boys, she sat in her rocking chair and covered her face while he paced back and forth across the floor. Nine crushing boy stomps, a loud whack as he swung his cane against the wall like a baseball bat and a scuffle as he swirled in place like a soldier on parade and repeated the dance across the other way. The cadence and the loud rap of the cane agains the wall boards was about to drive her mad. "Sit down, Kieran," she snapped, "before I break your damn stick over your head!"

He growled and grumbled under his breath, "It ain't a stick, its a cane," but he threw it into the corner of the room and stomped back and forth without it a few more times before stopping in front of her. "Tell me everything, from the beginning," he said sternly and listened intently as she relayed the quick encounter. He finally sat in his place on the floor after a moment, his fingers steepled and his mouth pursed, his eyes never leaving her as she rocked and spoke in a quiet voice that sounded so abnormal coming from her lips. When she told him about Scatter begging, no demanding, that he meet her later that night, the boy's eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared . "What did he mean 'your place'?" he asked quietly, reserved for him, considering the rage that was so obviously brewing behind his eyes.

"The apple tree at Most Holy Trinity," she answered, looking away from him in shame as his eyes grew wide.

He watched her silently, puzzling out how a place that was her prison as a child, and that she was nearly conquered by, body and spirit, as a teenager could possibly have any sentimental meaning to her. His hands dropped to his lap. "Why would he want to take you there? Of all the god damned places in New York, why there?"

She smiled and her hazel eyes went distant, which only pushed him further toward the precipice of acting on his anger. "It was where we left things for one another, messages and trinkets, when I couldn't get out, and where he would meet me when I could. After the last time, when I stopped going back, it was where we would meet when we needed time away from here, away from the prying eyes and blabbing mouths and it could be just us." Marta's eyes fell to his face, he looked like a betrayed little boy and her distant smile deflated and fell. "We must have hid ourselves well; I guess I thought you knew."

He shook his head slowly, "You never had me follow you," he answered in a pout. "And once you assigned me to stay with him, you were too pissed for lovey dove secret meetings."

She laughed, "I never had you follow me!" He could always surprise her. "Don't think I don't know you did it anyway. You never were quite as good at following the rules as you were making them."

He gave her a half hearted smirk, before a scowl took over his pointed face. He dipped his head, his ash blond hair falling over his brow. "You're not going. Not there, not with him."

"You can't stop me, Spot," she answered, her voice just a thready whisper.

He snapped to attention, his eyes blazing as all the color left them, "The hell I can't!"

"I'm an adult, not one of your boys. You don't get to give me orders."

"I do if you're being damn stupid!" he snapped angrily, his voice rising.

Her voice was a low, even growl when she spoke next, "You're not my mother."

He leapt to his feet from his cross legged perch on the floor and hulked over her, breathing heavily with his colorless eyes trained on her. "But you're mine!" he roared. "And I ain't letting you go out alone in the middle of the night to meet a thug! I won't!" His words fell between the two, taking their time to settle like a feather in a still room. His eyes widened and some of the blue returned as the weight of his own words hit him and he drug his gaze up to meet hers. Her hand was over her mouth, all the color drained from her cheeks, except the fawn brown sprinkle of freckles. "I mean. . .I. . ." he stuttered, trying to save face and sort himself out at the same time. But there was no taking those words back. "You're the closest I got. . .and you was always there. . ."

She stood and placed her hands on his flushed face, tipping it up to look at her pale one. "I have to do this. You and him were the only people who ever gave two shits about me, and he's gone. The man who asked me to meet might look a lot like my Ted, but he's not. But he's the only tool I have to keep from losing you. I can't lose both of you to the same creep." He could hardly bear to meet her eyes. The guilt that it was him, and the way he was had brought this on after all the warnings she gave him was killing him. "You're going to let me do this, if only to prove to you that the feeling that just came up in you, that shot you off the floor like a firecracker, is mutual. You WILL let me act on that same instinct, you got me? Because losing you to them will kill me. I won't let it happen without a fight." Saying the words, the three most important words in the world, was too hard for two kids whose parents left them alone in the world. Those words too risky, too terrifying to utter.

"Fine," he croaked. "But I'm your bird. You ain't going alone." She nodded obligingly and patted his elbow. He sunk back down to his place on the rag rug, drained from the burst of emotion and wrapped his arms over the top of his head, as if the sky might fall in on him at any moment. "I don't like you going there. I don't like you meeting him. I don't like any of it. That place gives me the creeps," he mumbled into the cave he created for himself.

She sat down in the chair with a flop, not at all the graceful motion that he was used to. "I'm twenty seven years old. The Orphanage isn't looking for me anymore and the Convent won't want me now. That place and the Mother Abbess were the haunted forest and the boogie man of your childhood bedtime stories, so its my fault that it gives you the creeps, but no one is going to drag me back into those gates. You can set that fear to rest." She took a deep breath, and sat back, rolling the chair back on its rockers and staring at the ceiling. "As for Scatter, he stopped trying to hurt me as soon as he knew who I was. I don't think he'll harm me."

He gave her a condescending look as he stood, rolling his shoulders and stretching his arms over his head. "We're leaving at sundown. Until then, I've got shit to do, people to yell at," his smirk returned, though not at full strength. He put his persona back on like a jacket, and she couldn't help but be impressed by it. She was exactly who she was, and always thought of it as a weakness, but there truly were two sides to him. There was the perceptive, quiet kid who liked to watch people and figure them out and the cocky, smirking leader who always got his way; it was magnificent to watch the two split apart and then merge back together.

She let out a weak, breathy laugh as he popped his cane up into the air and caught it before he tucked it in his suspender loop. "While you're yelling at people, mention to the boys that the washroom was disgusting. If they can't manage to piss in the toilet I will be forced to start organizing target practice for them, just like they have with their sling shots. Dogs can be house trained, and so can they!" He laughed loudly as he left her room and climbed the stair to the bunk room.


	3. Chapter 3

_A/N: So here is the third installment of Ants and Giants, I want to send a thank you to_ ** _Livelearnlovesing_** _for her/his very kind review! I really do love to hear that my writing isn't completely irrelevant and boring, and hearing that you feel like you know who my character is just made my day! Its important to be autonomous and write for your love of it and not for the reviews of others, but its also nice to know that you're reaching your audience in the way you'd like! Accuracy note: Most Holy Trinity is a real Catholic Church in Brooklyn that was open at the correct point in history. I was unable to find record of which churches actually had convents and or orphanages attached to them, so that part is me taking artistic license. As always, Spot, as he is represented here, is the creative property of the Disney corporation, Scatter and Kisser belong to me and I receive nothing from sending them to play with the canon characters._

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She unbuttoned her blouse, slipping it from her shoulders. Off came the filmy chemise she wore under it, until she was bare to the waist. Moving like a woman in a trance, she entered her personal washroom and turned her back to the looking glass. The evidence of sixteen years of wisecracks, running away, standing up for other girls and defiance never went away. The sisters were generous with the switch, paddle, hairbrush and ruler depending on where Marta was punished. They were her reminder of what she left, what she thought was behind her. As a newsie she got in her share of scrapes and fights, but she was allowed to fight back with her fists, at the Convent school she only had her wits and her mouth and neither one served her well within those walls for anything besides elevating her to hero status with the other girls. The scars were so old that they were just an intricate weaving of silver lines on her skin, barely raised to the touch. She sighed, after having time to think she was just as incredulous that she wanted to go back to meet Scatter as Spot was. It took her years to get over him, yet he beckoned and she was ready to jump, ready to run back to him knowing full well that her scarred heart couldn't take any more. Her skirt and knickers slipped from her waist in a heap on the floor. She sighed and stepped into the tub of water she prepared, even though she had just bathed a few hours before.

She felt desperate. She hated feeling desperate. Desperate people do stupid things, like giving their babies to nuns to raise because they think they're too young to handle it, like handing themselves over to a gang because it guarantees that they live a few extra years, like running away from the only home someone knows because they are afraid of being turned into the very person they hate the most. She knew she was desperate that night that she ran away, she knew it from the moment she decided to shimmy a drainpipe while still bleeding from her last infraction.

A flutter of girlish giggling from the window pulled the attention of two fourteen year old girls away from each other. They were the unspoken leaders among the girls at the Convent school at Most Holy Trinity. Constance wasn't as strong as bold Marta, but she was more clear headed and toed the line with the sisters a bit better. Marta was a walking, talking bag of trouble, but still the younger girls looked up to her like she could do no wrong. Constance was trying to clean Marta's newest crop of switch lashes, but the sound of the silly girls tittering was grating on the patient's already ragged nerves. "What are those twits going on about?" she growled irritably with her face down in the blankets.

Constance got up and and flounced across the room, her ugly grey pinafore swinging side to side. She shoved the flock of younger girls out of the way to see what was causing the fuss and an unamused frown wrinkled her pretty face when she turned back around. "You've got company, thats what." Her blond hair was put in two braids even though she was far to old for it. She and the others like herself and Marta who were nearing the age where they would either be sent to the factories to work and find husbands or would be farmed into the convent were all too old for pigtails and pinafores, but it was what they had and what they were told to make do with. Marta's cinnamon brown hair was shorn close to her head like a boys the previous year because her tight curls followed suit with the rest of her and refused to behave as they were expected to. After a year it only reached her shoulders.

Marta approached, pulling her nightgown down to cover the oozing cuts on her back and the small gaggle of girls parted easily to allow her to the glass. Outside the window, a quartet of raggedly dressed, dirty, grinning boys stood outside the gate wailing a crude song at the tops of their lungs. All the girls looked to Marta as she gaped at them with her mouth hanging open for a moment before regaining her composure. "Those fools are going to get themselves jailed," she scoffed.

The girls opened the window to hear the terrible singing better and, seeing the movement above, Scat started yelling, "Romeo, oh Romeo!"

Marta rolled her eyes. "Thats the girl's part, you dunce!"

His friends laughed at him and they began to scuffle and play with each other until he yelled again, "Kisser, come down! We never have any fun without you! If you don't come down, I'll have to find another girl to tell me what an idiot I am"

"Go home you delinquents!" she snapped back as one of the sisters came hustling out of the house and into the shadowy yard. "Get going before they call the bulls on you!" She paused a moment, and got a desperate gleam in her hazel eyes, after the round of punishments she endured that day, she needed out. "Hey Scat?" he turned and grinned up at her as he jogged backwards, "Is it a good night for a fishing trip?"

She faintly heard his deep laugh waft up from the street, "Seems a bit warm for fishing!" With that he took off running, but she knew he would be back, for the question was nonsense. The fact that she called after him was the message. He'd be waiting for her on the other side of the fence under the apple tree after lights out. The younger girls sighed dreamily at the interaction, and Marta rolled her eyes. "Don't any of you get swoony over any of them; they're nothing but trouble."

"You're no fun, Marta," a little girl of ten whined.

"You're right," she retorted, "now, close that window and go to bed. You'll give those fools even bigger heads than they already have by making eyes at them that way and thats the last thing they need." She shuttled the girls away from the window and waited until everyone was in bed and bed checks had been made before she snuck to the washroom and slipped a skirt on over her shift. Scatter had nicked it for her a few months before so that she didn't have to be seen in her school dress outside the gates. She tucked the back hem of the skirt between her legs and up into her waistband so she could easily slip out the window and shimmy down the drainpipe. While breeches would be far more practical, they often ended up at dancing halls and she loved the feeling of her skirt swishing about her ankles while the boys whirled her about the floor.

True to his unspoken word, Scatter was there waiting on the opposite side of the fence in the shadow of the apple tree when she boosted herself over. He kissed her hand with a wink and they took off together through the dark streets until he pulled her into the open door of a dance hall. The lights were bright and the air was hot, humid and smoky. Sweat, cigar and a hundred different notes of perfume and aftershave filled their noses as they breathed in the heady air. "Ready, Kiss?" he yelled over the din of music and laughter. She gave him a wink and he swept her into the crowd of dancers quicker than a flash. One dance after another, they flung around until they were drunk off of it all and had to sit down. They drank pints of beer and laughed with the people sitting around them until they could breathe again. Then they were back on the floor for more.

The music slowed and his hand at her waist tightened and pulled her in more closely. She cried out in pain before she could clap her lips shut. He searched her embarrassed face for answers, and his confusion brought on tears that she almost never cried. She was normally more one for defiance and curse words, jabbed elbows and shocking slang than tears, but there was no one to fight and the tears were coming with or without her permission. She sucked in the hot, fragrant air, desperate to calm herself. "I can't go back, Scat. Its killing me," she whispered. "I'm not meant to be stuck in that cage. I'm not meant for this life! There has to be someplace that I make sense!" She cried into his jacket feeling like such an idiotic weakling. His shirt smelled like dirt and soot, sweat and soap. The material was rough and worn, the tweed of his vest was frayed and pilled. It sounded so silly, so frivolous, to be telling a boy who whose boots were hardly still stitched together that she wasn't made for a life where she always had a roof over her head and the opportunity for food in her belly, but she wasn't meant to be a captive. She was made to be free, singing for her supper out in the sun and the wind, out where her wild ways and loud mouth wouldn't seem so outrageous.

"What did she do this time?" he asked in her ear, keeping his voice low soon one else could hear. The muscle in his arm tightened around her, even though his grip stayed lax to keep the pressure off her wounds. His low growl of a voice held more empathy and understanding than anyone had shown her in her short life.

"Switch, no meals, extra duties, the usual," she muttered. "If I could keep my damn mouth shut for ten minutes or let someone else get in trouble, even if they don't deserve it, I'd be better off."

"But you wouldn't be you if you did that. The day you stop butting into other people's problems and taking beatings without a whole buncha mouth is the day that I know your light went out." She looked up at him questioningly. "Your light's not goin' out, you're coming with me because you make sense with me."

Marta took a shaking breath as the memory of those words rang through her head, reverberating like the steeple bells above Most Holy Trinity. She knew she was too young to have put so much faith in them, but they were some of the first kind words that were ever sent her way, and for the longest time he meant them. The water around her had long since grown cold and she shivered in it. With chattering teeth and wrinkled hands she stepped out of the bath and ran a comb through her long hair, oiling the curls so they would stay coiled instead of turning to fluff.

As she buttoned the last button on her blouse there was a knock at her door. She took a breath, her personal problems were taking her away from her job, she wasn't even sure what time she got into the bath, it could have been hours. Standing in the hall was a little boy no older than seven with his bootlaces untied who the boys had dubbed Pickle for his affinity for getting himself into trouble that he couldn't get himself back out of. "Miss Marta, can you show me again? Spot says I can't learn to use a slingshot till I can tie them myself."

"That's the rule," she answered, trying to curl her mouth into a smile for the little boy. "Show me what you remember, Pickle, and I'll help you from there." He plopped down on the floor, his nearly black hair hanging shaggily out from under his cap and the tip of his tongue poking out of his mouth as he talked his way through tying a bow in his bootlace. She caught his mistake and showed him, letting him do the other boot unassisted. "There you go! A few more days of practice and you'll be terrorizing the neighborhood."

He looked up at her, his pride turning to curiosity. "Is what the big boys are saying true, Miss Marta?"

"Dunno," she answered, "depends on what they're saying."

"That you used to be one of us. That you was a leader like Spot. Some of them are saying its a bluff 'cause they don't think a girl was ever a leader and some are saying that youse too pretty and too…girly to be a newsie."

She smirked, it took fifteen years for there to be no one left besides her and Spot who remembered her time in charge. "What do you think, Pickle? You think I'm Brooklyn Newsie material?" She laid on her street drawl thick and squinted at him cooly, like she would have back when she was herself.

"I dunno, Miss Marta, youse pretty tough for a girl…" he answered with a grin, his bright blue eyes twinkling wildly, "…'specially when the big boys cook up some trouble or don't do their lessons." She ginned at him and straightened his cap for him.

"You ask Spot, because we both know those big goons are too chicken to. He'll tell you the truth." She winked at him and sent him on his way. She knew that the truth would be better received, however Spot decided to spin it, coming from him. The little chap would likely be dubbed a fibber if he ran out of her room yelling that she said it was true. She learned that lesson with Scatter. Even if something was her idea, her secret, her plan, it was always less disputed coming out of Scatter's mouth. She allowed him to be her voice so that they could hem and haw less and get going with their business more. They were in a man's world and as much as she wanted to be heard and listened to without question, she had to play with the cards she was dealt.


	4. Chapter 4

_Authors note: Wait, two uploads in under 24 hours? Crazy I know. Yes, I do have a life beyond writing, I just already had most of this written since chapters 3 &4 were originally one super long chapter. Anywho, R&R please! I have one more chapter planned, but knowing me it will turn into two because I'm wordy. Most Holy Trinity is a real Catholic Church in Brooklyn that was open at the correct point in history. I was unable to find record of which churches actually had convents and or orphanages attached to them, so that part is me taking artistic license. Buuuuuuuut, there was a state run orphanage wishing 3 blocks of MHT which I took as a sign that this was the church I needed to use. So there you go. As always, Spot, as he is represented here, is the creative property of the Disney corporation, Scatter and Kisser belong to me and I receive nothing from sending them to play with the canon characters. _

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At sundown she met Spot inside the front doors. She hoped her best dress hid the way her knees shook, and that her embroidered cape masked her fidgeting hands and quaking shoulders. The boys had their supper and were now either lounging around or working at their nightly lessons. They watched her with wide eyes and whispers, and she knew that her secret was out. She smiled at them and nodded a greeting, and they lowered their eyes with respect. She couldn't help but wonder what he told them. He waited for her, draping his lean body against the doorframe with his arms crossed on his chest. If she didn't know him so well, she might have thought that he was bored or at the very least relaxed, lounging there with his hat pulled low over his eyes and his slingshot in his back pocket. He oozed nonchalance, while she radiated anxiety. "No stick?" she asked in a weak voice, trying to relieve some of the tension that surrounded the two of them.

"Cane," he corrected witheringly, "and no. Too flashy for sneakin' around." He shoved his hands deep into his pockets, feeling naked without his trademark hanging from his suspender loop. He looked up and their eyes met, the exhaustion and worry there made her gasp. Between the boys hounding him for information all afternoon and the reappearance of Scatter, he hadn't had a moment to himself since he got back from selling that morning. His eyes were shadowed and dark, with bags underneath so deep purple they looked like bruises. He was a solitary creature and being with people all day drained him. Even though he was still angry that she needed to see what Scatter wanted, he was looking forward to the long walk alone. When he spoke his voice was low and raspy from smoking all afternoon as his ability to deal with his boys got less and less. "We split up as soon as we get out the door," he instructed. "I'll take the longer way around and give you a signal when I get there. I ain't coming out unless you call for me. You won't see me, unless you need me, until we get back here." She nodded and smoothed back her long mane of wild curls. She left it down that night, letting her freshly washed curls free of their normal coil atop her head. His hand reached out like he was going to grab her hand for a split second before he drew back. They weren't alone, and her identity might be out amongst the boys now, but her connection to him wasn't. "Be careful," he ordered quietly and slipped out the door.

She made the hour long walk around the Navy Yard and toward Williamsburg, moving with purpose so as not to attract the wrong kind of attention. It was a cool, fall night and a huge orange harvest moon hung low in the sky, too heavy to rise all the way. Inside, all her resolve had melted and she wanted to run back home to the Lodging House and cry herself to sleep under her covers. Even facing the Mother Abbess and taking vows sounded better than meeting Scat again. Most Holy Trinity rose imposingly in front of her, with it's gothic double steeples and pointed wrought iron fencing all around. She nearly froze on the spot, having to shove down the overwhelming fear of the place in order to keep her suddenly leaden feet moving forward. The apple tree was just a twisted and gnarled stump, the branches had long since been cut off, its umbrella of protection from the eyes of the sisters gone. It wasn't until the low call of a mourning dove, too loud to have come from a naturally occurring bird came drifting over the still air that she felt like she could breathe. Spot was there, she wasn't alone.

That monstrosity was the first home she knew. She was born there, in the little dormitory out back where women in trouble could have their babies and leave them for the sisters to care for. The grudge match between herself and the Mother Superior began the day she graduated from the Orphanage to the Convent School when she was seven. She began to sneak out whenever she could and the Abbess was livid that the girl could so easily evade her and the other sisters and make her way into the city. Unfortunately for Marta, her swagger and bold personality made quite an impression on the people that she met once she was out, and the police officers got quicker and quicker to return her to the Sisters' custody. She took every punishment with a smirk and snide comment, because, in her mind, when she pushed the Abbess to rage, she won the battle. Every time she met Scatter under the tree once she ran away for the last time she had to convince herself that the beast of a building couldn't reach out to grab her and swallow her into its depths.

She straightened her skirt, fluffed her hair and leaned casually against the spear-like fence, not gaining much comfort from the sun warmed iron. Her mind reeled and raced in a way that made it hard to know how long after Spot's call that she waited there under the tree, but it felt like only moments before a voice cut through the silence. "Its not smart for beautiful women to go running around the city in the night," that smooth baritone growled out from the surrounding shadows. She was surprised to find that her heart leapt, not in the girlish way she expected, but in a worried way, hoping that he wasn't coming through the same alleyway that Spot had himself hidden in. Once he was out, bathed in the golden light of the harvest moon, the warm nervous tingle that was so familiar emerged and she felt like she was fifteen again.

"No one's ever accused me of being smart, Scatter, especially not where you're concerned." He stood in the street, keeping a safe distance away from her with his hands stuffed deep inside his trouser pockets. Years of life in the slums made her wonder what else he had in his pockets, made her worry about his intentions, but the naive convent schoolgirl in her wanted to run to him and bury her face in his vest to see if he still smelled the same. She wanted there to be music coming from somewhere that he could fling her around to, she wanted anything to show her that her guy was inside the hostile man in front of her. "I'd love to tell you that you look well, but honestly, besides the nice clothes, I don't think you look like you've changed a bit since I last saw you." She tried to keep her voice neutral, but her bitterness seeped out, despite the schoolgirl's wants, the betrayed woman was stronger.

"I grew a few more inches," he answered sheepishly, "and got a few more scars that you'd yell at me for getting." The first time she saw him he had that same smile, only it went to his eyes then. The first time she met him was only a few blocks from here, early in the morning. She was being punished for running away again. The baskets of bread and apples and the large, washtub sized pot of weak coffee let off smells that made her stomach rumble and her mind reel as they made their way out of the convent gates. Reverend Mother let her outside of the gates willingly, yes, but on a stomach so empty she could barely stay upright. This was a dare, a challenge, and she couldn't back down. As much as she wanted to lay down and die, she wouldn't. She would take her punishment with pride and she would glare at the Reverend Mother when she returned.

The sun was just rising, chasing away the last bits of grey from the sky. "Marta," Sister Agnes called. She smiled, she was a nice old bird, and seemed to be a little more amused by Marta's fire than some of the others. The girl's hazel eyes looked greedily at the basket of bread, its aroma making her feel crazy with hunger. "That bread is for the street children. Get up on the cart and hand it down with the sisters. If you behave yourself I will make sure you get something to eat when we get back. In order for me to do that, your feet can not touch the cobblestone, do you hear me?"

"Yes, Sister Agnes, not a single toe." The cart stopped, the sisters began to sing and suddenly the cart was surrounded by ragged, pale children with their hands outstretched. Newsboys, bootblacks, factory children and children who slept on the streets all hoping for just a bite to take the edge off their hunger. She handed out apples into out stretched hands until her vision got blurry around the edges and she she felt her body pitch forward.

When she woke, the ringing was still loud in her ears. A boy with dark brown hair and eyes that were the deep, earthy green of apothecary glass was leaning over her, his long, tousled bangs falling in his face. He grinned widely, the biggest, most honest smile she had ever seen and she couldn't help but turn her own lips up a bit. She tried to roll to her side, but he stopped her, "Whoa, easy there. You'll fall right off." She groaned and squinted up at him in confusion. He grinned again. "You told me your feet couldn't touch the cobblestones," he answered. His voice was low and quiet, but kind. "Actually, you kinda threatened me. I put you on a bench since I didn't want a second punch." This boy made no sense but as her vision cleared a bit more, she saw the telling red mark near his mouth. He caught her looking and grinned again. "Right in the kisser. You've got a mean backhand. I never been socked by a nun before."

"I'm not a nun," she answered, her tongue feeling to thick for her mouth that felt like sandpaper. She pinched and held up her much hated grey apron, "See, pinafore, not habit." He chuckled under his breath.

"Marta," Sister Agnes called, coming into view behind her catcher's shoulder. "Sit there until we are finished and recover yourself. Do. Not. Move."

"Aye, aye Sister," She croaked cheekily, saluting. The boy hid a snicker as the elderly nun tsked and went back to her work.

"Mouthing off to a nun," he mused once she was gone, "I'm impressed." He offered a large hand to her. It was callused and cracked with dirt and ink pressed deep into the grooves of his skin. By his baby face, he wasn't much older than her fourteen years.

"She's harmless," the girl answered, taking his hand and allowing him to pull her upright. "She's one of the few that like me." Her head swam and she ducked it low.

"Whoa, there, no more fainting!" he warned, steadying her shoulders. "You ain't sick or nothing, are you?"

"Nah," she answered, trying to stop herself from sounding so sickly, "just shaky. Reverend Mother hasn't felt very motivated to keep me fed since I got back from my latest adventure. Seems she likes my attitude better when I haven't eaten for a few days." He looked down, deep in thought. His dark, thick brows furrowed under the brim of his cabby hat.

He sucked his bottom lip in and blew out a shrill whistle. As if by magic, 4 boys were at his side. "What gives, Scatter?" A tall blonde boy asked. "You gotta thing for nuns now?"

"I AIN'T a nun," she snapped, but quickly had to steady herself with her hands.

Scatter sent a smaller boy back to the cart to get a piece of bread for him while the others questioned him silently. "Gather 'round tight so the nuns can't see her," he said in a whisper, as if the nuns were going to hear him. They didn't question why, they just circled around the bench shoulder to shoulder and kept up a raucous stream of conversation to entertain her until little boy returned with a fistful of bread and Scatter handed it to her. "Eat up," he whispered.

"It's for you," she said pushing it back. "If I take your bread and I get caught, it means that I couldn't hack Mother Superior's punishment. Sister Agnes will tell her I passed out, so she already will get a kick, I can't let her win." The five boys looked at her with a mix of awe and admiration on their faces.

"We're covering you," one of the others said as Scatter pushed the bread back to her. "They can't see nothing, just eat. Couple bites of bread ain't gonna fill you up." Scatter watched her intently as she broke the bread into two pieces and shoved the second half in the pocket of her pinafore. She couldn't stop herself from ravenously tearing into the other half. He was right, it was two bites, enough to take her back to the wobbling wreck she was in chapel that morning. She had another hour or so before she would be back at the point of fainting.

"Thank you," she murmured. "Did you five get some?"

"All of us but Scat," the little one said, "He was too busy catching girls falling off of wagons." They all snickered and Scatter blushed.

Before they could say another word, Sister Agnes was pushing through the wall the boys made and pulled her charge to her feet. The girl put her hand in her pocket, concealing the bread she didn't eat, and held it out to Scatter. He took her hand in a daze while the other boys hooted. "Thanks a lot," she called, letting go of his hand that now held the bread as she was pushed onto the cart, and winked before she steeled herself.

Marta glared across the moonlight bathed street and snorted at his weak attempt to sweet talk her with reminders of her insulting way of showing affection to him. He stayed back and she didn't even stand up straight from her position leaning against the bars, neither one wanting to be the one who took the risk, tempted fate and bridged the gap between them. She remembered the way her body had lit up when he touched her earlier, and knew that if he touched her again she wouldn't be able to stop herself from touching him back, from kissing him, holding him or worse. He pulled his hands from his pockets and crossed them over his chest, making his shoulders look all the broader as he realized that she wasn't going to soften as easily as he hoped. He grumbled under his breath, so low that she couldn't understand him and rubbed his chin, wincing slightly. "You've still got that mean left jab." She could see the bruise forming on his mouth and chin even in the low light. "I had to lie and say you got a kick in on me to save face."

"It is why you named me," she said, fighting the smile the was curling at her lips. She hoped desperately he couldn't see it. "A sock in the kisser from me is like a badge, you used to wear them with honor."

He chuckled, trying to keep it under his breath. "Hope you weren't waiting in the dark for me too long."

She knew he meant that night. She knew it was supposed to be harmless and innocuous small talk to try to ease them into whatever it was that he wanted to see her for, but that statement broke the fragile dam holding back all of those festering feelings. "I've been waiting in the dark for you for ten years, Ted," she said in that low, even murmur that any boy she'd ever cared for knew meant they needed to find shelter from the storm she was about to unleash. "I found out what you did from a lookout because you didn't even have the balls to tell me yourself. I waited, hoping you'd come to your senses, hoping you'd write me a letter or come and see me to explain why. You were just gone!"

Instead of remorse or shame, he looked amused that she was bitter. His green eyes gave a cruel twinkle. "That's my girl. Talk in your mean mama voice and let everyone know whats bothering you," he taunted, egging her on like a bully and as suddenly as she remembered why she loved him, she remembered why she hated him too.

Her eyes blazed. "Everyone?! What everyone?" she hissed. "You demanded to meet me in the middle of the night next to a convent. There is no everyone! There's you and me and the sleeping nuns. I'm sure the schoolgirls have woken up by now and are having a great laugh at the show we're giving them. Thank God everyone already considers me a strange, fallen woman who lives scandalously with a bunch of boys! If I weren't already the talk of the neighborhood gossips, then sneaking out to meet a man in a deserted square in the middle of the night would certainly move me up there."

"You are the biggest goddamned mistake of my life!" he bellowed. "You're pathetic! Still mad over ancient history, still waiting for me at the boys lodging house after all these years! What is wrong with you? You knew where I was! You could have come to me whenever you wanted. You chose them over me!"

"You made your choice and it wasn't me!" she cried, hating the petulant way her voice sounded. She felt every bit as pathetic as he claimed. "You left me alone with nothing and no one else but that house and those boys. The only place and the only people I ever made sense with, remember?" She sneered as he winced at his own words being thrown in his face. "Nothing else in my world made sense so I clung to what did. I sat for my teaching certificate and got hired on as the teacher for the house and slowly took over the house duties from Noakes as he got older. I was the natural choice when he passed. I managed to grow up and make something of myself without abandoning everything I loved! I made the best of the mess you left me with." Standing there under the twin bell towers a terrible thought came to her, "If I knew I'd end up hurt, sad and alone either way, I would have taken my vows without a second thought. I wish I had, the only thing that would change in my life would be my dress."

"I wish you had too, because none of this would be happening if it wasn't for you. I should never have convinced you to come with me. I should never have gotten you messed up in all my bullshit. You would have been safer in the Convent." His words stung, even though to her mind they couldn't be more false. "You are the reason they wanted me. You are the reason they've kept their eye on Spot. It only took them a few weeks to figure out that I wasn't the hot shit they thought I was, that I was all swagger and no substance. A couple of fights later I earned some respect back, but once they figured out I was just your mouthpiece, they kept their eye on you and watched you groom that kid up from a pup. You did good, Kiss, there's no denying that. He's the leader that you and I were when we were on the same team."

A small squeak came from her throat as she forced the air from her lungs. All her fault. She played both of them right into the hands of the worst sort while she was trying to keep them safe. "They can't have him. He's too good, too defiant, too smart to just be a criminal," she mumbled. "He's got to get out, I have to get him out!" Her voice was becoming shrill and panicked, hysterical even. Higher and higher, faster and faster she muttered, blamed and cursed.

"Kisser, there's nothing you can do. Its all on him now." She took off running down the cobblestones before he could say anything else. She couldn't see where she was going, and she didn't care. Away from the man she once loved and the place she should still be locked up in was all that mattered to her, because she couldn't get away from the blame he laid on her. It was all her fault, and there was nothing she could do to fix it. All responsibility rested on the narrow shoulders of a quiet, hard boy with eyes like ice who stood frozen in the alley a few yards away, listening intently. He was already planning, already preparing for the fight to come while the only person he cared about was falling apart with guilt.


	5. Chapter 5

_A/N: Do you ever get a super fangirl moment where another writer that you love comments on every one of your chapters and you literally squeal out loud? Yeah, that happened when I got the notification that_ ** _Joker is Poker with a J_** _reviewed all my chapters and gave me some solid criticism and a major ego boost, thank you thank you! Another thank you is due to_ ** _livelearnlovesing_** _as well for another wonderful review! Thanks y'all! I made some tweaks to all chapters except the first with your suggestions in mind, especially that flashback/current timeline transition in chapter 2! Nothing major, but I think it reads much more smoothly now. As always, please read and review and I don't own Spot, Disney does, but don't tell Spot, because I don't think he'd like knowing that he's someone's property._

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He was already awake, washed and dressed when she when she got to the door of the bunk room. He sat, taking up more space than he really needed, watching the boys rise with a cool look. His elbows rested on his wide spread knees with his long slender fingers intertwined in the void in between, glaring up at them all through his eyelashes. She walked from bunk to bunk, shoving, smacking and yelling at each of the boys to get up and greet the day, but there was something missing. Her lips smiled, but her face was sad and tired. While she was't visibly distraught, anyone who knew her could see that her normal air of ease and merriment was gone. Her sails had no air in them and she was listing. He sat on his neatly made bunk, watching her pass from bunk to bunk rousing the boys. When she passed him, she placed a gentle hand on his shoulder and squeezed for just a moment before moving on. With everyone up and moving towards being ready for a day of work, she passed back down the center aisle of bunks and down the stairs where she closed the door to her room. "Nips, Trout and Haystack, see me before you head out for your papes," he barked, his voice stern but tired sounding. Some of the boys looked at him nervously, they'd have to be dumber than a box of rocks to not notice that both Miss Marta and Spot had been acting off the past week or so, but they all knew better than to question him.

Haystack was ready first. The tow headed eleven year old stood sheepishly in front of Spot, rubbing his nose nervously. His straw blond hair stood out at all sorts of strange angles no matter how he tried to wet it, inspiring his nickname. "Hey kid, I need you to spread the word among the birds. For today and tomorrow, if you see me, you walk the other way. Where I am you are not, you got me?" Stack didn't question, just agreed obediently. "And you," Spot paused, gently poking his finger into the kid's skinny ribcage, "you, personally, Stack, keep your eye on Marta. Report anything you see that makes you twitchy to Nips or Trout and give Marta a warning like you did the other day if you see anything she needs to worry about before you can get someone."

"Ain't I gonna report to you, Spot?"

"I got business to take care of, I ain't gonna be here for a few days. Until you hear it from me, assume that you should be telling Nips or Trout." The kid nodded and ran out the door. He liked to be one of the first to get his papes so he could get rid of them and get on with his birdie work. It was only once the bunk room was completely cleared of all the other boys that Nips and Trout sauntered out of the washroom and took their places, leaning against the bunk opposite of Spot's immaculate bed, awaiting orders. Nips seemed relaxed, whether that was real or a front to try to attract less attention, Spot was never sure. He was one of those people whose appearance commanded attention, even though he himself didn't really enjoy it. His height alone made him stand out, he was six feet tall before he was fourteen and just kept growing form there. His shoulders were broad and his arms muscular, it never mattered how much Spot grew or how much muscle appeared on his body, next to Nips, he would always look like a scrawny little shrimp. He was good to have around for the pure intimidation factor of his height, but he also was a good second. "You two ready for today?" he asked in a low voice, twisting his hands around his cane and tapping it on the floor. He looked up at Nips, "Remember, wait three days before you push her. If you don't give her enough time to stew she go off half cocked and do something stupid that will get the both of us killed. Coach her through, once she gets her feet wet, she'll pick it back up fast. If I'm not back by this time next week, then you take things over." Nips agreed, shoving his hands in his pockets. "Train Haystack up, the kid's got good instincts, he just needs time to grow up a bit."

He turned his attention to Trout who seemed ruffled and uncomfortable. He loved Marta as much as the next guy, but what Spot had planned made him nervous. He wasn't used to being in on the plans and the inner working of the borough. He was content playing his harmonica, selling his papes and occasionally soaking someone simply because Spot told him it needed to be done. He was especially uncomfortable with having to convey information to Marta, important information. "You got everything you need?" Trout shrugged. His silence never kept him from being understood or befriended and it certainly never kept him from selling his papers. He had Marta's trust and that was what Spot was counting on. He slipped the key on its worn piece of jute off his neck and held it out. Trout grasped it in his large hand and tucked it into a worn black box with his only prized possession, his brass harmonica. When both items were safely tucked back into his trouser pocket he nodded at his friend. "Not till she's ready, Trout." The mute boy questioned him with a look. "You'll know, I promise. Kiss can't hide who she is or what she thinks. She's an open book if you watch her. When she's ready, you"ll know. Get her out and walking, she's just gonna twist herself up in knots sitting here." He paused, tightly gripping the shaft of the cane, hoping that he wasn't forgetting anything. "Both of you keep and eye and an ear out for reports from Haystack, he'll be with her wherever she goes." He stood slowly, and spit in each of his palms and held them out to the two lieutenants who spit in their own palms and shook his hands firmly. "Take care of my girl, Brooklyn, while I'm away, boys." His voice was calm, like he was taking a stroll over to play cards in Manhattan for the night as he picked up his cane, popping it into the air and catching it. He paused, looking at it like it was an old friend, before he placed it back against the wall next to his pillow instead of slipping it into its place at his waist. He offered each of his boys a tight lipped smile and a nod before silently motioning for them to move out. The two lieutenants moved like a wall down the stairs with him following behind like a man going to a firing squad.

He broke off from the two for a moment at the bottom of the stairs and knocked on Marta's door. "Kiss, you gonna be ok?"

"I'm fine, Spot. Get to the circulation office before they sell out." Her voice sounded soft and exhausted.

"Everything's gonna be ok, Kisser. I promise. I'm gonna take care of it all." He fled before she could answer again, reclaiming his place behind Trout and Nips and they marched as a unit to the open gates of the distributing center. They picked up their papers and split off in three separate directions, each carrying on as if it was any other day.

They waited until he sold the last of his hundred papers. He moved around all day, never staying in one selling spot too long, not out of nerves, but because he felt like he needed to see as much of his city as he could, in case this was the last time he got to see it. He stopped, his back against a wall out in a busy square and lit a cigarette, but only got a single drag off of it before something or someone slammed into him so hard that all the air was knocked out of his body. Before he could even start to recover from that, a hand was against his head, slamming the side of his face into the bricks and then the world went dark.

He was six years old again, waking with a yelp in an otherwise quiet bunk room. Instead of the soft sound of Kisser's singing, there were only the soft snores, heavy breathing and occasional mumble from his bunkmates. Tears slid down his face as fear coursed through his veins; she was always there when he woke this way before. Where was Kisser? Why wasn't she chasing away the people who hurt him when he slept? He scrambled from the blankets in a panic and rushed over to her bunk. She wasn't there, but Scatter was, still fully dressed and sitting on her bed with his head in his hands. "Scat," Spot asked quietly, so as not to wake anyone else, "Where's Kisser?"

Scatter startled up from his reverie and peered at the little boy in front of him through swollen, tired eyes. His dark hair that normally curled and waved in an unruly way was limp and greasy from him pressing it back so often. Spot looked just as ragged, with his sweat dampened long johns, pale face and wide eyes. "I dunno, Kid. She didn't come home, I ain't seen her since the circulation bell rang." He scrubbed his face with the heels of his hands and let out a deep sigh before looking at the fidgeting kidding front of him, who looked near to tears. "You ok? Did you have another nightmare?" Spot nodded and more tears welled in his big blue eyes. Kisser was always there, singing her low lullaby to let him know that those things, those people that chased him through long corridors in his dreams couldn't hurt him anymore. He tried to wipe the moisture away so that Scatter wouldn't know what a baby he was, but Scat saw anyway. Instead of teasing him or telling him to buck up, a big hand wrapped around his skinny little arm and pulled him gently down onto her bunk. "I'm worried too, Kid, and I can't sleep without her here, neither." He threw his arm around Spot's shoulder and gave a gentle squeeze.

"She makes the bad people go away," Spot whispered so softly that Scatter had to lean in to understand him.

"Yeah," he answered back, his voice a soft, gentle rumble, "I get that." He stood and then knelt down in front of the kid. "Listen, I ain't gonna sing to you like she does or nothing, but you sleep here in her bed for tonight. I'll be right up top if you wake up again. In the morning, we'll skip selling and go look for her, ok? You an' me?" Spot nodded and put his head on her pillow, sucking in the soapy smell of her, the perfumed smell of the stuff she put in her hair after she washed it to tame the wild mane down so she could braid it. It was the one girlish thing she did, and it made her smell all the more perfect to the two that loved her.

The next morning, the two set out from the Lodging house ready to scour all of Brooklyn for her, but they didn't even make it a whole city block. The streets were still on the quiet side, and she was there, meandering up Poplar street with her braid undone, staggering like a drunk. They ran to her, Scatter pushing her warm brown hair out of her face and Spot grabbing onto his spot on her pocket that he held onto since her hands were usually full of papers. Her head lolled on her shoulder a bit as Scatter pushed her hair a bit too roughly in his excitement to see her. Her face was bruised and a trickle of dried blood fell from the corner of her mouth. "Marta?" Scatter called as she laid her head against his chest. Her battered hand, split and swollen from giving back all the fight she was got, grabbed onto Spot's and squeezed. "Kiss? Talk to me!" Spot stared at her black and blue knuckles, the marks of blocking hits went all the way up her forearms.

"I'm ok, now Scat. We're all ok. I took care of it and we're all ok," she mumbled as she seemed to fall asleep in his arms. "We're gonna be ok."

The blackness overtook him again and then he was running. Running as fast as he could while someone either much faster or much bigger than him followed though endless corridors. It was dark, lit only by small gas lamps and someone was chasing him. His bare feet slapped the bare boards, but his eyes never left the light from a single window at the far end. He never reached the window, never, in all the years he'd dreamed this same thing. The walls were dark and grimy but that window glowed like the sun was right outside of it. He could hear the big heavy footfalls getting closer and feel the ragged breath of the person on his neck. Just as the huge hand clamped down on his shoulders his eyes flew open.

A noise came out of him, he expected it to sound like a scream or a yell, but it was more like a broken groan. He wasn't sure where or when he was, all he knew was that it was dark, damp and that his head hurt while the rest of him just felt too heavy to move. He was sprawled on his face on a dirt floor. He slowly pulled his leaden left leg up to his chest and then the right so that he was crouching on his knees with his forehead still on the ground. He tried to lift his head, but a wave of nausea so intense ripped though him that it was all he could do to not lay his face in the rapidly growing puddle of vomit between his splayed hands. "Real tough, Conlon," he muttered. "First you get yourself knocked out and then you puke your guts out on your own shirt. Swell." He couldn't make his body obey him, he could barely move beyond dragging his head to the side to rest on his forearm. The smell of his own sick was making him gag, but he couldn't get away from it. He reached out the clumsy hand that wasn't acting as a cushion for his battered head and tried to push loose dirt onto the puddle, but he couldn't see straight enough and just ended up spreading it around. He cursed under his breath at Scatter for hitting him so hard when he would have gone willingly.

"Hey Kid, you awake?" a voice called. It was tinny and muffled, but familiar, if only Spot could make his brain work enough to figure out who it was.

"Nips?" he mumbled. "Trout?" As soon as the words were out he knew they made no sense. If either Nips or Trout were around, he wouldn't feel this beat up. Not to mention, how the hell was Trout going to ask him if he was ok when Trout didn't talk?

"No, Kid, its Ted, well, Scat, I guess." Spot swung out on instinct, but only managed to knock himself over onto his back. He groaned as his vision swam and wavered and he choked back another wave of nausea. "Easy," Scatter scolded. "Look, I don't wanna be here anymore than you want me here, but I got orders to follow."

"What'ja do to me?" Spot slurred.

"I didn't." Scatter's face pinched with anger. "It was decided that I was not fit to bring you in after I was caught coming back from Most Holy Trinity. My loyalty came into question and I was charged with getting you ready instead, to prove myself again." His jaw was so tense that he was hard to understand has he spoke through gritted teeth.

"She deserves your loyalty more than they do," Spot growled through his tight throat. "You're an asshole now just like you were back then. I don't know why she couldn't see it."

"Same reason she could never see you for the creepy, possessive, little bastard that you always were, I guess. I don't know if she's crazy or just sees value in people that no one else can see" Scatter pushed his heavy bangs off of his forehead and grinned his holy smile, missing the tooth that Marta knocked out when they were fifteen. "Are you going to let me take a look at you and clean you up? Or do you want to sit in your own piss, blood and vomit a little longer?"

"I don't need your help."

Scatter snorted out a dark peal of laughter, "Hate to tell you kid, but whether you want it or not, you need help and I'm the only one offering." Without waiting for a response, he hooked his arms under Spot's and dragged the boy across the dim room to a corner where he could prop him up. "Damn kid," he hissed as he assessed the damage. "The boss is going to be pissed, he wanted you ready to talk to today."

"I was ready when I woke up this morning," Spot mumbled defiantly. "I ain't staying here, they can get on with it and kick the shit outta me now and dump me either on Marta's doorstep or in the East River for all I care."

For the first time in years, Scatter took a good look at Spot Conlon. At sixteen, he remembered feeling so strong, so invincible and so on top of things, but looking at kid sprawled out next to him with his brains half bashed in, he realized that he must have looked just as small and just as scared behind the mask of indifference. The kid passed out again while Scat cleaned him up. "She won't thank you for dying in her name, kid, anymore than she will for trying to go into this willingly. You can't win here."

"I ain't a kid," Spot mumbled with his last thread of consciousness and Scatter chuckled hearing Marta in his words snapping that she wasn't a nun. He hated her. He loved her. He wanted her, but her had to leave her alone.


	6. Chapter 6

_A/N: First, gratuitous reviewer loving: between being a seriously talented writer who gives me fun and interesting things to read and being one of my 2 reviewers who give me virtual ass-pats,_ ** _Joker is Poker with a J_** _is about to get virtually sloppy mouth kissed by me. Seriously, if you haven't checked out the Benjamin Hotel series or Numb…or any the rest of the prolific catalogue that Joker has written, you should. Enough of my little slobberfest over Joker, I've overstepped the creeper line and I know it._ ** _Livelearnlovesing_** _, as always, thank you for always being excited to see what Marta will do! You are like my own little 2 person fanclub! Which is great, it helps keep my very scattered brain from losing interest. Which is huge because I have the attention span of your average goldfish._

 _Second, This chapter is a flashback that ran away with itself and ended up so long that it became its own chapter. It will likely be a double upload weekend for this story, because the rest of what was originally the rest of the chapter only has a few holes for me to fill before I upload it aw well._

 _You already know I don't own Spot. Spot thinks Spot owns Spot. Disney owns Spot. Sorry Spot. Your grumpy, scowling, adorable behind is not your own property._

 _XxXxXxX_

Kisser stared at her reflection in the worn and spotted mirror and sighed at the person who glared back at her. Her skin was a gentle tan from three years of daily sun and wind, but still she looked pale, haggard and puffy from lack of sleep. At just seventeen, she looked older, her eyes had hardened and wised up in those three years, she could no longer be the carefree school girl whose only adversary was a slightly insane and obsessed old woman. As of that morning, all of Brooklyn was officially her adversary. Her hair had grown past her shoulder blades and bleached a bit from a warm, deep chestnut to a light reddish brown that she wore braided down her back and tied with a bit of twine. Twine from the same skein held the key that hung around her neck. Though the brass was cold, it felt like it burned her skin. He left it on her pillow after she left for the distribution center the day before, the leader's key, and she wanted to throw it at his skull. She wanted to shoot the damn thing from her slingshot and hope it went in his eye.

For a respected guy, being left the key was an honor. It was the vote of confidence of the leader who went before. If there was any question of the new key holder's worth, though, any Newsie who thought he could do better could challenge the key holder and then it came to a fight. Kisser was still bruised from her encounter with the Dockside Boys. She was still shaken from Scatter's angry departure. While tall for a girl, she was still so small in comparison to the big burly boys that slept in the next room, boys who she knew would not take kindly to being ordered around by a girl. It would hurt their pride too much, and the hurt pride of teenage boys was what got her into this mess, what made Scatter condemn her to be the key holder in the first place. He knew what would happen, and he gave her the key out of spite.

That was another fine mess her desperation to hold on to Scatter and the feelings he gave her got her into. From the night she ran, he was her whole life. She may have been brave enough to leave, to sneak out all those times, to defy the Reverend Mother and take the consequences with nothing but a smirk, but Scat made sure she learned to survive once she was out. She was always told she was so independent, so fierce, but the truth was that she was naive about most things. The confined life of the Convent School left her lacking in street smarts, and Scatter not only protected her, but taught her to take care of herself and then he taught her how to live, how to laugh without someone else hurting, how to play and not feel guilty, how to dance without caring that there was no music and how to love. She loved him with reckless abandon. She loved him desperately. Desperately enough to storm into the tavern that the Dockside Boys were known to frequent. Desperate enough to demand to see their leader. Desperate enough to throw the first punch. They laughed at her once they had her subdued, amazed that a little girl would dare to question them, and she got mad. As she thought about it she leaned over the trough sink and groaned, even she knew it was a stupid thing to say. "You don't want Scatter, because Scatter is nothing without me. We come and go as a team and unless you take both of us, you get neither of us." Oh, they laughed at that, but she made them listen.

She and Scat had plans. They were going to get real jobs, grown up jobs, even if they had to submit to working in the factories. They were getting out, getting married. They weren't doing any of those things now because of what she did. He couldn't look at her when he figured it out. She hurt his pride, made him look both weak and stupid, and then he acted weak and stupid and threw everything they had away. He chose not the Dockside Boys, but himself and his ego, over her and the plans they made together. All because she had to save him.

Kisser swiped her wet hand over her reflection angrily, blurring the face that she couldn't stand to look at for another second. She needed out, she needed to hit something or break something. Noakes was old and grey and much more stooped than anyone should be while still working for wages and the boys were up late with booze and cards and dice. The old man wouldn't bother with cleaning up the mess until after the boys were up and out of the lodging house, so she gathered bunches of bottles into an old flour sack and hauled them down to the docks with her pockets full of marbles stolen from the stashes of some of the smaller boys. It was late spring and the days were starting to get truly warm, but in the early morning, the chill off the water made her skin tingle as she set up her targets. "Whatcha doing'?" a small, surly voice called out.

"You go blind since last night?" she asked, her voice monotone and disinterested.

"No." He scowled but never lowered his eyes from her face.

"Shame. Mighta upped our circulation if it was a little blind kid following me around instead of a little mean kid. Don't ask me stupid questions, I ain't in the mood." His normally blank face went white as he watched her set up a shot with wide, hurt, blue eyes. He was only seven after all and was used to Kisser taking care of him in a teasing but loving way. She'd never said anything so uncaring and cruel to him before. She was too distracted to make the shot and the marble plunked into the river without hitting anything. "Damn," she grumbled, and dropped her eyes to him, expecting him to tease her for the poor shot. Her heart sank at the sadness on his pointed face. "Oh, hey, Spot, don't listen to me today." She knelt next to him and reached out to touch is arm, but he pulled away as if her fingertips might burn his skin through his shirt. "Shit," she whispered, mostly to herself, and dropped from her knees to her butt on the docks. "I can't do anything right by you guys lately."

He glanced over at her and furrowed his brow, taking in what she said, before he sat down beside her. He left a good bit of distance between them, enough that she couldn't touch him again and watched her out of the corner of his grey eye for a bit before he asked, "Youse pissed about Scat leaving?"

She shrugged as she lined up another shot. "Sad, mad, lots of feelings. None of them very nice ones." She let the marble fly and was rewarded with the shatter of glass. It wasn't the greatest shot, she only took the neck off the bottle. "Which is why I said that, not because I meant it. I don't wish you were blind and I don't think you're mean."

"I am mean," he quipped proudly. "Trout thinks so."

"Oh yeah, Trout tell you that?" Another shot and the rest of the bottle shattered. Her muscles were starting to loosen up and her heartbeat wasn't so heavy and dull in her ears.

He glared at her witheringly, "Course not. I just get him and he doesn't get mad when I'm an asshole."

Her fourth marble flew high into the sky as his casual use of "asshole" jolted her out of her concentration. She stared at him in shock for a second before a loud, uproarious laugh barreled out of her. Under normal circumstances, she would have scolded him for it, but it felt too good to laugh. He shot her a funny little lopsided grin, proud to have pulled her out of her bad mood, if only for a moment and thankful that he wasn't getting cuffed behind the ear like he would be normally if he cursed around her. She laughed until her eyes were watering and her stomach hurt. "Oh, I needed that, thanks, Spot," she sighed as she wiped her eyes on the sleeve of her pink shirt. She lined up a few more shots and took out a few more bottles. "Did the bell ring yet?"

"Nah, not for a few more minutes," he answered. "Noakes hadn't even gone upstairs yet when I left. You ready to go?"

"I'm not selling today, but you head on over. I've got an errand to run. You sell your papes and meet me here when you're done and we'll go to Coney Island for the afternoon. Eat ice cream and ride the ferris wheel. My treat." She grinned at him, but faltered when he dropped his eyes. for a moment. When he looked back, he was giving her one of his long steady looks.

"You can't run, Kiss. You can't let em know youse scared." She gripped the key at her breast through her shirt and took a shuddering breath.

"You gonna protect me when they come after it and try to take it?" she asked, in a pathetic attempt at humor.

He snorted, "No one protects you, Kiss. You don't need no one to protect you. You can't hide, if they knows youse scared then they will take it."

She hung her head, knowing that things were really looking bad if the seven year old was able to give her an effective pep talk. "Go get your papes, kiddo. You gotta eat and pay for your bed tonight."

"So do you."

She smiled at him, "Don't you worry about me, I got savings and if we're not going to Coney then I can sell the evening edition and make up some of my losses. I'm not in the mood to sell just now. There's somewhere I got to go."

"You want me to come?"

"No," she answered swatting the brim of his cap, playfully. "You keep an eye on everyone else while I'm gone, let me know if I have anyone in particular to worry about. I'll watch my own back." With that she pulled the remaining marbles from her pockets and held them out to him, trusting him to stealthily redistribute them and headed off around the navy yards towards Williamsburg. It was a long walk, she could have picked up some papers and sold as she made her way from Poplar St to Montrose Avenue, but she just felt like being alone and shutting the world out that day. She walked with her hands in her pockets, avoiding contact with other people.

For the first time in three years she entered the dim, cold and eerily quiet sanctuary. She stood in the back with her arms wrapped tightly around her middle as if her guts might fall out if she let go. She couldn't make herself move, she had no clue why she felt so compelled come in the first place. She sighed, she knew exactly why she needed to come, she just didn't like it. Parishioners were confessing, heading into the little room, and returning a few minutes later to kneel in the pews and say the rosary to complete their penance. For a moment she thought maybe that was what she needed, to be absolved of her sins, to be forgiven for smothering the life out of her love for Scat and for accidentally berating a small child, but the thought of entering that small dark box and telling an adult that she couldn't see all of her misdeeds made her stomach lurch threateningly. So she stood, stock still like a statue dripping with discomfort. "Either the apocalypse is upon us or the second coming…because I can't imagine anything less earth changing that would bring Marta Gatcyk back to church."

Kisser turned and studied the young woman who stood in the doorway. She was a novice, a sister in training. Her dress was simple and black, her blonde hair only partially covered by a simple black veil. Her face was sweet and heart shaped and her mouth quirked teasingly. Marta grinned and ran to her, "Oh, Constance," she sighed. "Oh, hot damn, am I happy to see you."

Constance laughed and shook her head, "Cursing at a nun inside a church. I don't know why I'm shocked, but I am."

"Sorry," Marta mumbled, "I never was good at all the rules, and being out with the boys for so long, I forgot most of them."

"What are you doing here?" Constance asked, dragging her friend into a back hallway where they could talk without disturbing the praying parishioners. "I honestly never thought I'd see you again after you ran."

"I always find my way back here when I've done something wrong." She shoved her hands in her pockets and shrugged her shoulders up towards her ears, uncomfortable with the secret being out. "None of the boys know, but I always come when I feel guilty. I end up here, waiting for her to come barreling out of her office with a switch or a paddle, waiting to be dragged to the seclusion room to wait. I don't even know what to do with myself when I feel bad, so I come here." She smiled at Constance sheepishly, "Normally I'm too afraid to come through the door, and I just stand outside the gates and memorize the stained glass."

"What's different today?"

"Today, I deserve to be dragged back in. Today I deserve every punishment." She answered quietly. "I ruined what I left for and left myself with nothing. Nothing makes sense and I don't know what will happen. At least here, I know I will be miserable and I know exactly why. Out there, its just confusing."

Constance looked at Marta skeptically and put her hand to the darker girl's forehead. "Are you sick? The Marta I know would never back down from a challenge!"

"The Marta you knew didn't have to go to fisticuffs with any boy who thinks he has what it takes to run Brooklyn. They will all see right through me and they will all try to take it, and I can't take on all of them! I'll fight if I have to, but I don't want to! I didn't ask for this."

The blonde girl grinned, "You never asked for it here either! Yet, everyone followed you and listened to you. You are a leader, Marta, whether you like it or not, you just have something in you that makes people believe in you and what you do. You are brave and smart and funny."

"And brash and obnoxious!" Kisser interrupted. "I take things too personal and act on impulse! I always had someone else with me before! Here I had you! Someone who smoothed over and took care of all the things I couldn't be bothered with. With the boys, that was Scat, but he's gone now and he ain't coming back! The only person who I know has my back is seven! I can't have a seven year old as my second, besides a girl leading Brooklyn, thats the dumbest thing I ever heard! I can't do this, Constance."

Constance gripped her friends shoulders and gave her a quick shake, rattling her out of her hysterical rant. "Since when do you care what other people think of you? And since when do you need anyone else? You are NOT that girl Marta. You don't need Scat. You don't need me. You are the leader, now get out of this church before all of the statues start bleeding and get back to your boys. You are not giving up everything you worked for because some boy broke your heart. You're better than that. There will be other boys, there will never be another you."

Kisser smirked, "Apparently I do need you to shake me out of my own head from time to time."

"You know where to find me next time you need a kick in the. . .pants. Now, please, get out!" The blonde blushed as her irreverent friend nearly caused her to curse. Marta always was a bad influence on her well behaved friend.

"Some best friend you are, kicking me out! What happened to your vows of kindness and charity?" Marta stuck her tongue out as she began to saunter out, trying to build herself up to the point where she could believe Constance's words.

"You kicked yourself out, stupid. Now go! You can come here to try to solve your problems, but you can't hide from them."

Kisser stopped and turned, "I'll be back to see you this time. I promise. Tell Mother Abbess I said hi." With a wink she ran back to Poplar Street Lodging House and sat imperiously on the front steps waiting for the boys to return, waiting for the challenges to arrive. She pulled the key out of her shirt for the first time that day, proudly displaying it as they filed in past her.


	7. Chapter 7

_A/N: Hooray double upload! Sorry I cut the weekend down to the wire, I had some father's to celebrate as well as taking the holy terror who is the inspiration for tiny Spot swimming in the lake today. He was trying to impress me by learning to dive. It was a loooooong hot day. I own Marta/Kisser and Scat. Disney still owns Spot and Spot still doesn't like it._

XxXxXxX

The first day, no one thought anything of Spot's absence; he was a solitary creature prone to taking little constitutionals around the city at random. Everyone brushed it off as Spot off doing Spot things that no one dared to question. Marta watched for him each night as she stood behind the desk signing the boys into her register and collecting their nickels and pennies for their bed and supper. Each line that was filled, each name scrawled made the dread in her heart a little more palpable. Trout watched her, her face full of worry and felt awful. She seemed comforted by him hanging around her, but it didn't ease the lines around her eyes and mouth or take away the crinkle in her brow. When he didn't return to the lodging house the second night, the hushed whispers began to roll through the bunk room. They all wondered where he was, what happened and, most importantly, where the key was. Some of the younger boys even took to loitering around his bunk, daring each other to touch Conlon's cane. This game was very short lived though, as Trout was nearby, his bunk being the one right above Spot's. He growled at the little boys like a grizzly bear whenever they got near and made some very menacing gestures at them. Nips chuckled at the display and shook Trout's hand across the space between their bunks.

As they got ready for the day in the washroom on the third morning, both of them were starting to think that Spot either was some sort of future reading, mystical sooth sayer, mythical creature in disguise or just absolutely bat shit crazy, but neither one was brave or stupid enough to decide on one or the other. Any way they looked at it, this plan seemed ridiculous without him present. It was easy to doubt him when he wasn't there drilling into them with his cold, calculating eyes. When he was there it was easy to remember all of the times that his plans worked, that he had a track record that was second to none. In his absence though, it was easy to over think and question everything. It was especially easy to worry about involving Marta. They both knew that Kiss and Scat were the best leaders Brooklyn had seen until Spot stepped up, that was undisputed fact, but Marta wasn't Kisser anymore. She was a lady, and while Nips had charmed his share of girls, neither one of them knew what they were doing when it came to talking to a woman. Needless to say, they were both scared shitless. "You're up first, Pal. You ready?" Nips asked. Trout vehemently shook his head no. His face was pale and beads of sweat prickled his brow even though the bunk room was cold in the early fall morning. "All you have to to is hang around her for today, figure out how she's doing and see if she seems…there." The incredulous look Trout answered with perfectly conveyed his thoughts of _How the hell am I supposed to know that?_ Nips just shrugged off the silent question and said, "You have to give her the letter this morning so I can tell her his plan tonight. He said she'd need time. We have to have her ready whenever he comes back. Good luck." Trout slammed the side of his fist against the side of the trough sink and grunted in frustration before rushing out of the Lodging House.

He only bought half his normal amount of papes and set up his normal spot outside of one of the canneries along the river. He pulled out his harmonica and began to play with one hand, holding up the headlines in the other. His task, though, weighed heavily on his mind and also apparently on his face, since only his regular customers seemed to be buying. The rest of the workers scurried by, greeting him with worried glances. It was a cold, blustery day but he wasn't looking forward to going inside where Marta was. He passed by Nips on his way back who cocked a sandy eyebrow at him and he gave a single curt nod in answer. He shoved his hands in his pockets and tightly gripped his harmonica case as he slunk back to the lodging house.

Spot's voice the night he asked Trout to take on the responsibility of helping him rang through his head as he stalked back to the distribution center to sell back his unsold papers. "She needs someone she can trust, and you've been around as long as me. You've always come through. She likes you." He had paused, shining the gilded top of his cane on his pant leg. "Don't think of her as a girl, she don't think like a girl. Treat her like you'd treat me. Respect, overlooking it when she acts like an ass and a little give and take, thats the way to get somewhere with Kisser." Trout had stared at his friend, knowing what Spot was getting at and shook his head. "You want her to open up, youse gonna have to give something in return, and youse the best I got for stuff like that. Your secret is the kind that will melt her like butter. She's going to be pissed at me, and I need to know what she hasn't told me. I need to know what she knows about the Dockside Gang and everything that happened when they went for Scatter. She's protecting me but I don't know from what, but she might tell you. I can't let those bastards keep feeding on us, this ends now." He hadn't said that he had to save himself or that he couldn't watch Kisser go through the hell she went through with Scatter over and over again, but Trout knew he meant it.

She was on her hands and knees in the washroom with a scrub brush and bucket, grumbling to herself about what dirty slobs this batch of boys was. She'd already cleaned all of the stalls and fixtures and was left with just the floors. Without a word or even a sideways glance her way, he tucked his cap into his pocket, dipped a second brush into her bucket and got down on the floor next to her and began to scour the floor boards. She sat back on her heels to watch the dark, hostile looking boy with a look of wonder on her face. Never in ten years of cleaning up the lodging house had anyone, beside Spot in his younger days, helped her clean anything. She smiled softly and proudly, and bumped his shoulder with hers as she went back to work. "You doing ok?" she asked. He shrugged and shot her a nervous smile out from under his thick black eyelashes. "Looks like you got something on your mind." He nodded and dropped his eyes back to the floor before waving his hand outward from his face. "Later? Ok, we can talk about it later." They went back to scrubbing in companionable silence until they were at the washroom doorway.

She took his brush away and took her bucket down to the kitchen to rinse it out, raising an eyebrow when he followed her. He'd been around for almost as long as she and Spot, blending into the background at first, since he didn't talk, but eventually proving himself worthy in a fight, but they never spent time together. "Is it later now?" she asked. He took a deep breath and nodded. Spot said to get her out, get her walking. He crossed Brooklyn on a daily basis, but he couldn't think of a single place to walk her to until he remembered what Spot said about give and take and the conclusion he came to made him blow the breath out through his lips with a frustrated noise. She chuckled. "Must be some deep shit Trout, you got some paper ready?" He shook his head and pointed to the door and then made his fingers walk across the countertop. She smiled, nodded silently and went to get herself a coat.

They walked and he chewed on his cheek as he silently led her through Brooklyn. "Where are we going?" she finally asked, but he didn't answer. When they reached the start of the bridge, she paused to watch him. She could see the hesitation, whatever he was doing, he didn't want to do it. He was dreading it with every ounce of him. She followed, a few steps behind, waiting for him to notice her absence at his side. The cold wind whipped around them as they crossed the bridge, pinking their cheeks and noses and biting their exposed fingers, but it didn't seem to bother him as he stopped around midway and stared upstream. She came up next to him, the wind loosing her hair from its knot on her head, and stared into the distance. "What are we looking at?"

He sucked in and let out a few deep breaths, preparing himself. "I-i-i-island," he muttered. It was soft, stuttered and not entirely clear, but there was no denying that he spoke or what he said. He let the remainder of the air he took in out and a small, proud smile toyed with his mouth for a moment.

She tried not to show her shock as she peered at the little slip of land far in the distance. "You mean The Refuge? On Randall's Island? Its a bad place, for sure, but what about it?"

"No," he said, shaking his head. "'Sylum."

"Yeah, there's an Asylum there, some hospitals too…"

He dug a scrap of paper out of his pocket and a pencil and scrawled _I ran. They were going to put me there._

"Your parents? But you're so smart!" she exclaimed. He quirked an eyebrow at her. "You are! You were the easiest kid to teach to read and write and you sell seventy papes a day without saying a word. Honestly, if you could squeeze a few words out a day, you'd be Spot's second instead of Nips. He trusts you more, likes you more, he just knows you're too timid.

He shook his head again. "D-d-d-don't w-want it."

She smiled, "No, you wouldn't. You're too sweet. They'd rip you to pieces inside of a day. It takes a certain kind of a person to lead or even second Brooklyn. But that doesn't mean he wouldn't choose you." They both mulled over that for a few moments before she looked at him again, leaning her elbows on the rail. "So, why'd you bring me here? You've known me for years. What about today made you think, 'I'm going to take Marta to the bridge and tell her that I can talk and why I'm on my own?"

The winds picked up and stole his slip of paper, leaving him to either speak or shrug. He wouldn't meet her eyes, just hoisted himself up onto the rail and pulled something from his pocket. He handed her a piece of paper and pulled his harmonica out and began to play. She stared at him. "What's this, Trout?" He ducked his head lower and pushed his hands forward as if to say Go on, but she was in no mood to take orders from a boy. "Trout, what IS this?"

He lowered the harmonica and took a deep breath and, with a great deal of concentration, stuttered out, "S-s-s-s-spot."

Her eyes flew wide and she looked at the paper in her hand. "He wanted you to give me this? Did he tell you to speak to me?" Trout nodded, his face pale. "So the stakes are high and he wanted you to give me something, something you wouldn't do for anyone else to help garner my trust?" His head shot up and his bright blue eyes met with her hazel ones. She searched his face. "And you went along with it?" He nodded and dropped his gaze to his boots, leaving him no way to defend himself from the left jab that hit his jaw moments late. He was still reeling when she stalked off towards the Lodging House again, griping the letter in her pocket. He ran after her, heading her off on the front steps.

"What does he want?" she demanded. Trout stuttered, he tried to tell her, but couldn't make his mouth cooperate. He could always make noise, but something got jumbled between his brain and his mouth when he tried to talk. It was just easier to make his hand signs or write out what he needed. Finally, he got frustrated and went inside to the desk to find a scrap of paper and a pen.

 _Dockside Boys. Scatter,_ he wrote. _Information._

She narrowed her eyes at him and he drew back a bit readying himself for anther hit. "He doesn't need to know that, it wont help him," she spat, her face blushing crimson. "You don't need me." She looked down at the paper in her hand. "Did you read this?" He shook his head, watching her carefully. She turned and walked briskly to her room and shut the door quietly.

 _Marta,_

 _You know where I am and you're pissed and pacing in your room, growling at anyone who comes near you. Stop. You're scaring the little guys. They need you. Let Nips and Trout in. If they're doing what I told them to, they're camped out in front of your door waiting for you to quit being a nightmare. They know the plan and will help you. When I get home, I'll need you. I'll need Kisser ready for action. Brooklyn needs you and the boys need you so get over Scatter- he's a dick, get over yourself- you're kind of an asshole too. Find someone who deserves a punch in the face- beside me, because I know you want to since I just called you an asshole- and be ready to help me when I get back. I know you're mad that I went with them at all, but I'm not staying with them. I'm coming home one way or another._

 _You and me, we don't do mushy stuff. We are Brooklyn. But if I don't- you know- use my money I have saved up to do something nice for the boys. Nips is ready to step forward as leader if he has to with Trout as second. Don't let that asshole touch my cane! Lock it in your room or something. Give Pickle my slingshot and make sure he learns how to use it right._

 _I meant what I said the other night in your room when I didn't want you to go, when you said I wasn't your mother._

 _-Kieran_

"Damnit," she growled, crumbling the paper in her hand. And then she got all the angrier because he knew that was what she would do. Her voice got louder, "Damnit all to hell, I don't pace! You pace, you asshole!" It was true. She was still, as if her anger seeped out of the soles of her boots and rooted her to the floor. It released her long enough to let her turn and punch her fist into the plaster while a guttural roar escaped from her body, "GOD DAMNIT SON OF A BITCH! WHY DIDN'T YOU TALK TO ME?" But as quickly as the bubble of rage had formed, it popped and she was left standing alone in her room panting and feeling drained. She reread his narrow, pointed chicken scratch and took a deep breath. He knew her too well. Her hand hurt from the two hits, one to Trout's face and one to the wall, her knuckles were swollen and bleeding. She swore under her breath and went to the washroom to clean herself up, knowing that she couldn't avoid the boys forever, but a few more minutes couldn't hurt.

Out in the hall, Nips trudged up to where Trout stood with his ear pressed up to Marta's door. "You give it to her?" Trout nodded, wincing. He hated this, she was already hurting and Spot was asking them to hurt her more and push her farther. "How did it go?" Trout's bushy black eyebrows slammed downwards towards his eyes and he let out an exasperated huff. "That good, huh?" Nips fidgeted, picking at a hangnail and darting his eyes upward to Trout's swollen lip. "What happened to you, anyway?" Trout rolled his eyes and jerked his thumb towards the door. "No way! You got sucker punched by a girl?" Trout flipped him the bird before pantomiming a punch to his face, kissing the fist as it hit his mouth. "Ooooooooh," Nips drawled as the realization hit him. At that moment there was a thunk and Marta's voice yelled out a long stream of curses. Then it was silent again for what felt like ages to the two nervous boys, before the door swung open and banged against its hinges.

She stepped out and glared at the two boys who stood in the hallway, frozen in place with eyes as big as dinner plates. Her arms crossed over her chest and one hip popped out as she stared them down. They quaked in their boots. Nips looked like he might pee his pants at any given moment while Trout seemed to be attempting to find a safe route in which to flee her presence, his eyes darting around the main floor madly. "I'm not ready to deal with you two or Spot's asinine plan plans. I have half a mind to go down to The Fox's Lair where those lowlives hang out, kidnap your idiot leader from them and dump him in the river myself!" Their eyes went wide and they looked at each other. As the realization hit that she said more than she intended, she stamped her foot like a child and hissed, "Shit! Little bastards!" She took a deep breath, closing her hazel eyes, digging the heels of her hands into her eye sockets. "You two are lucky you still have a bed here after agreeing to this. You're damn lucky I haven't tied you upside down to the dock pilings!" She turned and rested her hot forehead on the door jam, taking another deep breath, and starting to feel less like killing the three of them for sport. When she spoke again her voice was low, even and calm. The tremor of rage was gone. "Trout, go upstairs and get Conlon's stupid stick and put it away in my room. I'm going out. I need air and a walk and...just...out. Out of here and away from you punks so I can think without punching one of you. You two will stay here, in this house, until I get back. Do I make myself clear?"

Instead of the expected "Yes, Marta," Nips answered with a reverent, but still mumbled, "Yes, Kisser." Trout nodded emphatically before running up the stairs to the bunk room to do as she asked.

She continued to stare Nips down, boring her eyes that had turned a terrifying gold into his until he turned his brown ones to the floor. "You will look after this house, after these boys and after Trout while I'm gone. I will be back in a few hours. After supper, you two will have your asses parked in my room ready to tell me everything. Everything he he has told you, everything he is planning, and everything Stack and the other birds have reported to you since he left." She looked up at him, his six foot five towering over her five foot eight inches, jabbing her finger into his ribs and leaning her body deep into his personal space. He leaned back, away from her, but it just made her advance further. "If I find out that either of you two, or anyone else for that matter, has been snooping around The Fox's Lair you might as well stay there and sign on with Dockside, because you will not be welcome here anymore.

"Understood, Kisser," he murmured as Trout nearly tumbled down the stairs with the cane in hand. He deposited it gently in her room and scurried back to stand next to Nips. She placed her hand on his and looked up into his eyes. "Easy, Kid. Nips will fill you in on the rules for now. Sit tight and get ready to spill your guts when I get back. And put a washcloth on that lip."

He nodded, "S-s-s-sorry."

She nodded curtly and back swept out the door. Nips let out a long low whistle and looked at Trout. "Well, thats the most scared I've been in a damn long time." Trout nodded and clapped Nips on the shoulder. Nips rubbed his face, "Fuckin' Conlon."


	8. Chapter 8

A/N: Did anyone else notice that in the "Carrying the Banner" scene in the movie Swifty appears to be wearing a bra under his long johns? Seriously, it bugs me every time! I wonder if I'm just seeing it wrong or if he lost  
a bet. Question, are my super long, short story like chapters off putting? I've noticed that my word count tends to be in the 3,000 word range, while most other authors are putting out 1,500-200 words per chapter. I like a good meaty  
chapter, but maybe I'm weird like that. What say you audience? Anywho, by now you know who I own and who I don't. Disclaimer schmisclaimer blah blah blah.

XxXxXxX

Spot's legs were about as stable as the gum band on his slingshot as he and Scatter made their way through the cold, November night in Brooklyn. He tried to walk, tried to help Scatter move his body across the dark square, but it was like his bones  
turned soft and buckled underneath him. "Almost there, Kid," Scat grunted, gesturing towards a rundown brownstone the next block down. "Come on, get your legs under you. Youse makin' me do all the work." Spot  
tried to counter with a retort that was full of wit and snark, but all that tumbled out of his mouth was an unintelligible mumble that even he didn't know the meaning of, but he did manage to straighten his legs and take a little of his own weight.  
Scat woke him up only a few minutes before, hauled him to his feet and told him to walk. His legs were wet noodles, his head was still killing him and his shirt was stiff with his own dried blood, sweat and god knew what else.

Scat pounded on the door of the brownstone and after what felt like hours a tiny woman opened the door. Wait, not a woman, a girl barely older than him. Her face was that of a teenager, but her green eyes were old, tired and listless. He  
tried to lift his heavy head a little higher instead of letting it loll on his shoulder in a half hearted attempt to look neither weak nor like a dead body being dragged around. She wore nothing but a dingy and threadbare chemise, black stockings  
with holes in them and a wrapper that was once fine velvet. It hung from her petite frame as limp and dull as the stringy blonde hair that fell around her puffy, but too thin face. Once upon a time, Spot figured, both the girl and the  
wrapper were beautiful, but now both were used to the point that their luster and radiance were gone. They were muted, gauzy shadows of their former selves. She glared at the two of them boredly as her glassy green eyes traveled up and  
down their bodies. The way she looked at him, the way her eyes paused not on his eyes or his injuries, but his partially opened shirt and his crotch made him squirm. He tried to fix his glare on her to make her stop but between her never  
bothering to look at his face and the feeling that he was going cross eyed as he tried to focus on her smirking face, his cold, steely glare went to waste. Or maybe it wasn't all that impressive with half his face smashed in on itself. She  
appraised Scatter in much the same way before letting out an exasperated, rasping sigh. "Come on then," she said, waving a hand through the door frame and taking a step back.

"Mickelson sent us," Scatter said, faltering a bit.

"I know why you're here," she snapped, her voice harsh and streetwise, "he tells me more than he tells you. Now are you going to get inside or waste all of my coal letting my heat out into the night?" She narrowed her eyes,  
her nearly translucent eyebrows knitting together in impatience. Scatter grunted as he hoisted a slumping Spot up. The jostle pulled Spot back to reality and sent a fresh wave of nausea through him. He swallowed loudly, willing  
himself not to puke in the rather terrifying girl's front hall. She closed the door behind them and looked them both over once again, her eyes again resting at uncomfortable places on their bodies. The smirk on her thin lips left no doubt  
as to what was on her mind.

Scat cleared his throat, "He might not look like it, but the kid ain't exactly a featherweight." Spot craned his neck around to shoot a poisonous look at his companion, who pointedly ignored him as he asked the girl, "You got someplace I can  
put him or not?" It had been a long time since anyone had dared to ignore Spot Conlon. Then again, it had been a long time since he'd soaked anyone because they dared to try it. His reign had been relatively smooth in the year  
since the strike, and his reputation did most of the work for him.

She airily waved her hand towards the stairs, "Upstairs, second door on the left. Drop him off, I'll take care of the rest. Mick expects you back at the Fox."

Scatter's lips pressed into a thin line and his dark brows furrowed. "Mick said to take care of him, get him ready. No offense, sweetheart, but your kind of care isn't what he needs."

"Don't get your knickers in a twist, doll," she purred, seductively running her bony finger down Scat's stubbled cheek and neck, across his shoulder, over to Spot's and down Spot's chest but moved out of the way so the two of them could struggle  
up the narrow stairwell. Injured or not, Spot liked the thrill that her touch sent up his spine. "Like most people, besides you Ted, I have more than one use in life. Get him upstairs and settled and then scurry on back to Mick  
where you belong." Her voice lilted in sing-song at the end, teasing and childlike. He got a bit of a sick thrill at hearing Scat called out for being useless, it took his mind off of being both invisible and disrespected. He  
knew at a young age that Scatter was only a figure head leader, but he was kind and funny and made Marta happy, so Spot had excused his lack of gumption back then.

"I'll get to Mick when my job is done."

"Its your funeral, Errand Boy," she teased, waving her fingers flirtatiously at Spot. The quiet cough of laughter that escaped Spot's lips pinched Scatter's face into a grimace as he glared downward out the side of his bottle green eyes.  
He didn't have the presence of mind to hide how much he was enjoying watching the bedraggled girl take his old leader down a notch, quip by degrading quip. "Just lemme know when you leave so that I can get to work."

"Just remember which of your many talents Mick's paying you for with him, Darcy. Leave him alone unless you're going to fix him up to be ready for the boss. No funny business."

"Are you still here?" she asked boredly, sashaying away to another part of the main floor.

Scat growled under his breath and tried to hoist Spot up again. "Come on, Spot, find your legs for me, man. If you're alive enough to laugh at me then you're alive enough to help get us up the stairs. Arrogant little shit."

Spot put all the effort he could must into into stepping slowly up each stair and not letting his legs buckle under him. "Where is this?" he slurred.

"Dockside safe house," he answered as the climbed the last step and came up to the upstairs hallway. It was narrow and dark, the kind of corridor Spot hated. Scat seemed to feel him tense as he took in their dim surrounding with  
his one eye that wasn't swollen shut. "You're gonna stay here until you're ready to face the boss."

"Im ready," Spot mumbled, "take me to Mick."

"Sure kid, I'll take you to Mick. Soon as you can stand on your own and talk without sounding like a damn drunk, I'll take you to see Mick." With that he, none too gracefully, dropped his cargo on the bed. The sheets smelled  
like dust, but considering the state of the girl downstairs, dust was better than some of the imaginable alternative smells. After sleeping propped up against a crate on a hard, dirt floor for a few hours, the bed was heavenly, no matter what  
it smelled like. The warmth from the furnace, the soft mattress, the dusty sheets and the sucking void of his aching head all converged on Spot at once and shoved him into a deep sleep. Normally, fights and injuries made the nightmares  
come back to him with fervent regularity, as if each blow that he gave or took jogged loose something in his brain. But he was too hard asleep to dream in the brownstone.

Slowly, as if pushing through the thickest fog, he began to wake. He felt like he was trapped in cotton wool. He couldn't move and the sounds were muffled and what he could see through his eyelids that wouldn't quite cooperate and open yet  
was just white. Once he had pushed through the cotton, he realized how much his head hurt. His arms reached up, but were pushed back down. Instead of the musty, cold smell of the basement or the familiar smell of people, soap and  
ink of the bunk room, he only smelled dust and lilacs. The smell of the flowers was strong and heady and sweet. It made his head spin and his stomach churn. "Easy, Spot," a quiet, decidedly female voice said in his ear.  
"Rest easy, save ya fightin' for Mick. You'll need it." She had the rough drawl of a street kid and she didn't bother to hide it. Even though Marta almost never spoke like that, she was the only female in his world  
who would say something soothing. He wasn't awake enough to differentiate.

"Fucking flowers," he grumbled as something wet and cold was swiped across his head, down his uninjured cheek. It followed down his neck and chest. His skin broke out in gooseflesh at the touch and a small gasp escaped his lips.  
"Marta, quit being a creep."

A laugh rang out, but it wasn't Marta's throaty, loud, rolling laugh. It was higher pitched, more girlish than he ever remembered hers sounding, and just a little bit mean and biting. "Sorry that you ain't got a nose for my perfume, Mick  
and the others like it, and they pays my bills. So you'll have to learn to live with the smell. And creeps don't clean people covered in filth, which you are." The wet cloth distracted his foggy brain, as it dragged back and forth  
from his collarbone to his navel. He peeled his eyes open, well, the one that wasn't swollen shut, and blearily regarded the blonde sitting at his side. She still looked dirty and downtrodden, but some of the snark and raw erroticism that  
she displayed so vigorously around Scat was gone, and she just looked sad, even though she smiled.

She dipped the rag into a washstand bowl and rung it out, ready to continue what she was doing, but his hand flew up and grabbed her wrist. He lifted the sheet that covered him from the hips up and peaked under it. Try as he might, he couldn't  
contain the flush of embarrassment that rushed to his skin at his nudity, but he could attempt a smirk, even though the skin on his face felt sore and too tight for his bones from all of the swelling and open wounds. "Didja enjoy the show?"  
he asked smoothly.

She snorted, "Please, honey, ain't nothin' under that sheet that I ain't seen a hundred times before. I dunno what Niko did to you after he brought you in, but whatever it was left me no choice but to strip you down and wash you or burn the  
sheets." She went back to sponging, delicately wiping away the grime of the street and the basement of the Fox's Lair from his skin.

"Youse a real charmer, letting a guy know you value your sheets over him."

"Sheets don't come cheap, but boys like you are like newspapers, ten cents for a hundred around here," she answered smugly.

"Honey, there are no boys like me," he growled rather seductively. "Youse talking to Spot Conlon. I'm one of a kind."

She laughed that laugh again and he marveled at its ability to be sweet and girlish while also ringing with bite and anger. "Cocky ass street boys are all alike, same as the cocky ass thugs your kind turns into. Between taking care of  
you when you get the shit kicked out of you and being handed around between you bummahs when the boss decides you deserve a prize for a job well done, I've seen your face a hundred times in the five years they've had me here, Conlon."

"I'm not like them," he snarled. "Now where's me pants? You bettah not have burned 'em."

"They're on the floor. I wouldn't burn em, but I'll wash them."

"Show me." She huffed and stood up from her place beside him on the bed and walked to the door, where the pile of his discarded, disgusting clothes were. His suspenders were there, the red ones that Marta gave him. Everything  
else was donated, used, mended and reused, but those red suspenders were HIS, purchased from a store for him.

"See, safe and sound, Skippy. Not like you're going to be up and walking before they're clean and dry. You were a mess, in more than one way when you got here."

"It's Spot," he snapped, not disagreeing that he was either a mess or unable to leave on his own. "And leave the suspenders where I can see 'em when you wash the rest."

"Right. Now, can I get back to cleaning you up so you can get back to sleep?" He nodded, keeping his open eye trained on her while she worked.

"You gotta name?"

"Why?" she asked.

He rolled his eye, but winced at the pain the action brought. "Because I like to keep a detailed record of who gets to see me family jewels," he answered smarmily, "and because you know mine and you took my clothes whiles I was sleeping.  
Now tell me your name."

"Darcy Reynolds and you're Kisser's boy that I've heard so much about." she said, putting aside the bowl of water and painting the side of his face with a slippery salve from a tin. It smelled pungent and burned his eyes so badly that  
tears ran down his cheeks and his nose ran. But it dulled the ache deep in the bones of his face.

He glared at her suspiciously for a moment, as he forced himself to mask the feeling of warmth that he felt at being called Kisser's boy, "You know Kisser?" It was possible, Marta did have a nutty habit of talking to anyone who stood still  
long enough to listen to her, but most of those people didn't know her enough to even ask her name. The people who truly knew anything about Marta lived in the Poplar Street Lodging house. The people from the Children's Aide Society of  
course knew her name since they hired her, but they didn't know her beyond that.

"Not personally," she conceded, "no, but by reputation." She paused as she took notice of the icy glare he was giving her and he cautiously raised an eyebrow at her, he wasn't aware that Marta still had a reputation. Things  
that Spot didn't know were very few and far between and warranted further investigation. Had he become so complacent that something this big had slipped by him? No, that wasn't possible, something was not right. He crossed his arms  
over his chest and flicked his chin at her like he would one of his boys, signaling her to continue talking. "I think all the street kids from back when she ruled the streets knew about her. I mean a girl ruling Brooklyn, or any other  
borough for that matter, but especially Brooklyn, was unheard of and when she took it, the news spread like wildfire. And everyone within Dockside knows about her, after she barged into the Fox demanding that Mick leave Scatter alone. They  
still razz poor Ted about it."

"You didn't think he was so pitiful last night," he sneered. He needed to know what her angle was. If he couldn't figure her out then none of what she told him was worth beans, but she was like him. There was the real person  
and there was the persona and he didn't know her well enough, hadn't watched her long enough, to know which was which or even if there were only two versions.

Her face soured. "He's a bummah and deserves every bit of it, but ten years of getting teased over a girl gets a little old for those of us who have to hear it over and over again." He watched different expressions flicker across her face  
and even through his blurry, one sided vision he could see the signs of regret and hurt. The same things he saw in Marta anytime Scat was brought up.

"So, Kiss was here?"

"Not here, but yeah, she showed up at Mick's favorite tavern, demanded to see him, started a brawl with him and half of his close circle, all of them at least ten years older than her and with about a hundred pounds on her each. She called  
herself the Queen of Brooklyn, demanded that they take her instead. Its damn near legend among the inner circle." His breath caught in his throat as every lecture, every warning came crashing back into his already battered brain.  
She was never warning him about Scat's arrogance. She was warning him about hers.

"So how did they end up like they are if she did that, huh? If she came in swinging, how did Scat end up with Dockside and Kiss ended up leading Brooklyn? Ya story don't add up, Doll."

For a moment she looked shocked and wide eyed before her face twisted into a cruel smirk, "You really don't know nothing, do ya? She didn't tell you so you think youse gonna get something outta me?" She shook her head and picked  
up the bowl to walk it back to the washstand. Anger and embarrassment burned in his chest, twice in only a few minutes he'd discovered that he didn't know as much about Kisser as he thought. She'd snuck her secrets around his notice, used  
his soft spot for her. "Sorry, Kiddo. I ain't the type to go around spreading the secrets of the guys who keep food on my table and a roof over my head." She pulled the sheet and blanket up over him, "I'll go see what  
I got in the way of skivvies for you, and then you should sleep as much as you can. Like I said, you're gonna need all that piss and vinegar when Mick gets ahold of you."

"Darcy, I ain't staying. Mick can finish the job that the asshole who picked me up started, but I ain't joinin up." He dropped the glare and stared at her, long and hard and earnest, and she couldn't look away, feeling like his eyes had  
a hold on hers. "This ain't where I'm supposed to be, and I'd rather end up in a potter's field than trapped here the rest of my life. I been free since I was five and I ain't going back to captivity now."

A ghost of a smile crossed her pale face before she covered it. "If you want a chance at living then you really need your rest. Mick doesn't take well to being told no." Her voice was soft, all of the cruelty and hardness gone.

He smirked, "Me neither." He sighed and went to scrub his face with his hand, but she stopped him and guided the hand back to the bed and giving him another sad smile. She left quietly as his body began to feel heavy again, and he  
could feel the weight of exhaustion pressing him down into the mattress. When she returned, he was sound asleep again. She slipped the long john pants up his legs and covered him back up.

"Good luck, Spot," she whispered and blew out the lamp. Out in the cold street, a pair of bright blue eyes watched the light in the upper window of the townhouse go out. Trout blew into his hands to warm them and took off running  
for the lodging house. Finding Spot alive was worth risking Kisser kicking him out.


	9. Chapter 9

_A/N: Remember that time, before the first chapter that I claimed this was a one shot? And then when I claimed it would never be a great epic? HAHAHAHAHA! Now its more than 30,000 words and we're just getting to the juicy bits! This story has just taken on a life of it's own and I couldn't be more pleased. I was really wary after my last story fizzled out after 3 chapters. But Marta is just so strong and fun to write! I wish I had it in me to give Marta a new beau…but she's kinda hopelessly devoted to Scat Sandra D style. I've tried to give her someone to lighten things up, but it just ends up feeling phony. Thanks as usual to_ ** _Joker is Poker with a J_** _for her reviews! I hope those of you that are reading but not reviewing are enjoying this too. You really don't understand how motivating reviews can be until you start writing. It's made me much more likely to leave a review when I like something (unless it was written ten years ago or something, lol). Please let the writers on this site know how we're doing! Anyway, Spot's not mine, Walt and friends own him._

XxXxXxX

Trout stumbled through the streets, too tired to pick his feet up anymore thankful that he was almost home. He lost his footing and slid into the alley next to the lodging house, landing in a puddle with a groan. His coat and pants were wet and cold, but he figured he still had a few hours to sleep and let them dry before Marta would come through the bunk room to wake everybody for the day. He swiped his hand across his eyes as he stood below the fire escape. He quickly ducked behind some crates as Marta stepped out into the night. She stopped for a moment and stared upward into the dark sky, scrunching her nose a bit. She was still looking up when she walked out of the alley and into the street. He sighed, knowing he had to follow.

She moved smoothly and silently down to the docks, with her hands stuffed deep in the pockets of the trousers that she wore instead of her normal skirt and her normally straight shoulders slumped. She still had the saunter down pat, the slouching curve of the back that gave the impression that she didn't care where she was, the swagger that said she owned every cobblestone her boots touched. It was all coming back to her so easily. Her prim and ladylike quickstep was all but forgotten. She leaned almost lazily against the beams that held up the foreman's stand where Spot liked to sit and watch the boys when they were all on the docks together, staring out at the water.

His hand absently felt the silhouette of his harmonica case through his pocket. She wasn't ready yet. She didn't seem to know how to stitch the different pieces of herself together to make one person. A gust of icy wind, full of moisture from the river blew by and she shivered. Suddenly, he couldn't have slept if he wanted to. She hoisted herself surprisingly easily up the rope ladder to Spot's perch in the tower, quickly settling down to sit cross legged on the platform and stare out at the river. He sighed and pushed his hair off of his face. He needed to wash, he needed a bed and he needed food in his stomach, but all of that paled in comparison to keeping her safe. She kept extra blankets in the small office behind the desk, so he snuck back to the lodging house as quickly as he could. She didn't look at him as he wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and then one around his own. "His plan won't work," she said, her voice quiet, as if to keep from disturbing the stillness of the night as the water lapped the pilings below them. "Even if he makes it out of there and back to us, it wont work. Its is too simple, too childish. It isn't really a plan at all. They'll eat him alive when he goes back. You know that, right?"

"Uh-huh," he answered.

"He's so stupid sometimes that I just want to smack him. How could he go making all of these elaborate plans without knowing what he was up against? This isn't a little territory scuffle or even fighting scabs and grafters during the strike. He doesn't understand the kind of things that Mickelson is capable of."

"You do?" Trout asked, his gravely, unused voice blending pleasantly with the sound of the breeze and the water. He still only spoke to her, keeping the dam between his thoughts and his mouth open by keeping the words simple.

"Oh yes," she answered, softly and distantly. "I thought this was all over, but Mick is relentless." He pushed his cold hands out from under the blanket and signed _go on._ She sighed, pulled her hair over her shoulder and began to twist and play with sections as she spoke. ""You have to understand, Scat and I never woke up one day wanting to lead Brooklyn. We just wanted to be together and get a place where we could just live our lives. I think thats all any of us street kids wants, to have the pretty little lives that we see but don't get to have. When Chips, he was the leader when I first started selling, went missing, it was civil war in the bunkhouse. Boys breaking into groups supporting one leader or another, the guys who wanted to lead soaking each other in the streets and then their supporters taking their warfare out there with them."

Trout's eyebrows knit together, so dark against his pale skin in the moonlight. "Key?" he asked, subconsciously moving his hand like he was turning a key in a lock.

Even in the dim light he could tell she went pale. "The key was with Chips. He wasn't big on planning anything and didn't hand it down. At first we kept our heads down. I just wanted to keep my bed and Scat just wanted to buddy around and have a good time; he never was one for being serious. But after a week or two, half of the bunkhouse was locked up in the refuge for fighting in the streets. Noakes was pissed and worried that he'd lose his place and Scat and I were the oldest kids left, so we stepped up and did what we had to do. I was still fourteen and Scat had already turned fifteen, but we were the only ones there. Scatter took the lead since they knew him better."

Trout looked at her, one eyebrow raised and his lips pursed in disbelief and a slow, warm smile spread across her face. Her low amused chuckled rolled out from her throat, and she raised her hands in concession, "Ok, you got me. I bossed everyone around but they all listened to him better. I was still just Scat's runaway nun, they didn't feel like they had to listen to me. So, he and I would meet here, or on the fire escape every night once everyone else was in bed and we'd talk about things and I'd tell him what I thought should be done. We'd bicker and argue, but, we'd always come to an agreement in the end and then the next day, Scat would give the orders we agreed on. I'm not even sure he understood how much I was feeding him ideas, but if I left it up to him Brooklyn would be in chaos, because he didn't like order and rules. He wanted to have fun. He was charismatic and funny, everyone liked Scatter. He was the fun guy everyone wanted to talk to and I was the mean mother hen making all the rules in the background and sending those who misbehaved to time out. I was miserable at first. I missed being friends with the boys."

He opened and closed his mouth a few times as he tried to whittle down his thoughts to something he thought he could get out without stuttering, She chuckled. "What?" he snapped.

""That face. That's why Spot named you Trout. You look like a fish when you do that. I remember him telling me that first night he met you, when you wouldn't come back to the bunkhouse because you were afraid. You were so sure we'd send you away that you'd rather sleep in an alley than come in. The next night, when he couldn't drag you inside, he dragged me out to try to convince you and you hid from me. Everyone was sure Spot had an imaginary friend for weeks." He grinned, and she couldn't help but smile at the rare but beautiful occurrence. Like all rare and beautiful things, it was fleeting, disappearing as his mind went back to the question he needed to ask.

He pulled out his paper and pencil and made sure to make his strokes thick and bold so she could read them in the low light. _Dockside?_

"Yes, Chips was killed by Dockside. They left his body on the doorstep of the lodging house one morning. We went out to sell and practically tripped over him." She shivered again, trying to shake the memory out of her mind. What they did to Chips fed her fears. "After that we had a few good years before they came after us again. They roughed Scat up, told him he had a week and they were coming for him. I wanted him to run, get out of town, but he wouldn't do it. This was all he knew and he wasn't going to look like a coward. I had this stupid notion that he and I would run away to the country together, take Spot with us and get a house. I wanted my own grass to run around in barefoot. But he told me that he had to face them. I panicked. I picked a fight with him the next morning and stomped away, stomped myself right over to the Fox's Lair where one of the other birds had followed the guys sending the threats back to, and then I made the biggest ass of myself. I kept Spot as far away from everything Dockside as I could. I felt like I had to protect him from it all, like he might follow Scat there or try something stupid to get him out, but I should have worried more about myself." She swallowed loudly the regret leaving a bitter taste in her mouth as she thought about it.

Trout went silent again for a long time, brooding at the river. He knew he had to tell her what he learned, but was still scared of her. She was still so volatile and harsh, she could go off on a rampage yelling, at him like she had the night before without any sort of notice. Or she could cry. That would be even worse than being yelled at. But looking in her eyes, he could see the girl he met when he was seven years old, a girl who was definitely a little off beat, but who was steady and commanding. She could talk anybody into or out of anything she wanted, and could shut up an entire room of bickering boys with a single glare or clearing of her throat. He figured she was just about at that point that Spot told him about, the time that he would know when he saw it. Under the blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he touched the harmonica case through his pocket again. "I-i-i f-found S-s-s-spot."

She stared at him a moment, and he could see her rolling the words around in her brain, trying to turn his stuttered speech into anything besides what he actually said. The color in her eyes began to change, all of the blue seeming to drain out of the green leaning hazel until they were almost entirely gold. "You what?" He took his pencil back out and scratched out what he saw over the course of the night. She scootched closer to him to read over his shoulder as he wrote. "I seem to remember saying to stay away from The Fox's Lair." Her voice was low and cold.

"Mhmm," he mumbled contritely.

"Could you get back to the brownstone again?" He nodded and drew her a map and she nodded as she watched before looking up to meet his eyes. "Tell me everything you saw. Every detail. I don't care how silly or small something seems, I want to know about every roach and rat that scuttled across your boots tonight." He felt his face break into a grin before he even realized why he was smiling. She frowned, "What's funny?"

 _You sound just like Conlon,_ he wrote about the map.

"No," she answered, checking the small watch that hung from a silver brooch at her breast, "he sounds just like me. Now get to writing. When you're done telling me we'll have to work fast." He wrote down everything he could remember about what he saw and she read over his shoulder as he scribbled as quickly as he could. He felt her shudder against his arm the she read that Scat had brought Spot out of the basement of the tavern. "How did he look?"

not _good. face busted up, not really walking. let Scat drag him mostly. tried to talk but sounded like me_

She closed her eyes and turned her head away before nodding at him to keep going. He described the house, the street it was on and told her about the girl who answered the door in her underwear. He hadn't been able to get much more of a description than that because she was backlit from the bright light in the house…and she was a girl in her underwear. It was hard to think for a few minutes after he realized that. He told her which window they moved to, the left one on the front of the house, and that Scat left pretty soon afterwards, but the girl stayed for two or three hours before the lamp was blown out. She sat, silently digesting the information, sometimes rereading his account, sometimes staring stonily at the water. A plan was forming in her head, a plan she didn't trust to be any more successful than Spot's plan, but it was at least better informed. "When we get to the house, I'm going to need runners ready to go to all the other boroughs. I want the birds watching that brownstone and the Fox without getting too close. I need a meeting with the Manhattan leader, who is it now? Jacky left, who stepped up?"

"R-race," Trout answered warily.

"Good, I like him. I'm taller than him. It's nice to look down at one or two of you jokers every now and again. I want him on the bridge, midway at noon. I want everyone else selling as usual until I say otherwise. We have to get back. You, Nips and I don't have a lot of time to prepare. Go get Nips and Haystack up, I want them to know before we wake the others. We have to find out a way to keep tabs on how Spot's healing, because we're crashing his initiation party." Trout smiled sadly and reached into his pocket as he stood. When Kisser turned to see why he was still standing there, the Leader's Key dangled from his fingers in front of her eyes.

"This i-i-i-is y-yours," he said and waited for her hand to close around it before jumping down to the dock and taking off back towards the lodging house.


	10. Chapter 10

Kisser's eyes opened slowly and she looked around the dark bunk room, wondering what woke her. She sat up and stared through the darkness to the window, hoping that the moonlight would help her see. A whimper sounded from down the row of beds and then a shuffle. Spot's little voice moaned, "Nooooooo, let me ouuuuut." She let her breath out and listened to him thrash for a few minutes, waiting for a sign that he woke himself up. He gasped loudly and gulped in air like he hadn't been able to take a breath while dreaming and then tried to lay still and quiet, covering his quiet sobs with his pillow. She sighed sadly, and began to sing "For the Beauty of the Earth," in a quiet alto. It was one of the few hymns she remembered, because it always seemed to make her feel better when things were at their worst. Listing off all of the beautiful things and thinking about them got her through nights standing alone on a stool in the middle of her dormitory while her roommates slept and days upon days locked in isolation. It seemed to have the same affect on Spot's battered heart. His whimpers died down as she sang and then hummed through the melody one more time.

He never talked about his life before he showed up outside of the distribution office. He told them his name and that he was five. He didn't seem to know when his birthday was and clammed up and shut down when pressed for anything else. He didn't let her console or cuddle him when he woke from the nightmares. Even when he was shaking and crying, he pushed her away. Her words of comfort meant nothing to him, but her singing every time he woke built a strong bridge of trust between them over time. He trusted her, even if he trusted no one else.

She went to roll over and go back to sleep when he called out again, "Kiss?"

"Mhmm?"

"Will you sing some more?" He sounded like an actual child for the first time in so long and she wondered if it was the dreams or the lack of other ears listening that allowed him to soften up.

She frowned, "That bad, huh?" He didn't answer beyond the rustle of blankets that she knew to be him covering his head. "You want the same one again?"

"The one with angels all night," he answered, his voice muffled.

She nodded, even though he couldn't see her and began to sing again, keeping her voice low so as not to disturb anyone else.

Sleep my child and peace attend thee / All Through the Night

Guardian Angels God will send thee / All Through the Night

Soft and drowsy hours are creeping / Hill and dale in slumber sleeping

I my loved ones' watch am keeping / All Through the Night

Angels watching e'er around thee / All Through the Night

Midnight slumber close around thee / All Through the Night

Soft and drowsy hours are creeping / Hill and dale in slumber sleeping

I my loved ones' watch am keeping / All Through the Night

Again, she hummed through the melody a few times and then fell silent, waiting to see if he would call out again, but the bunk room was silent except for quiet snores and the deep breathing of twenty sleeping boys.

"You're such a mush," a growling voice, rough from sleep said from the bunk above hers.

She smiled sleepily, "Don't tell anyone, I've got a rep to keep."

"Yeah, a rep of having a big old soft spot for the kid," he teased.

She suddenly needed to see him, needed to feel him. She needed to look into his eyes and look for what he wasn't telling her. If this was their last night together, she didn't want to spend it away from him. "Scat, will you come down?" She spent the last week confident that he would tell her that they were cashing in their pickle jars full of saved pennies, nickels and dimes for train tickets and heading out of New York, or that he would show up one night bloodied but triumphant but the week was almost up and he said nothing. He didn't even look worried. He was a good fighter after all, the best Brooklyn had even after all of the boys who got locked up during the leader war were released. He was broad and muscular, but not bulky or slow. He managed to move in a lithe way that always confused his opponents. He had a chance, but what she had on Dockside was too vague to give her confidence in his odds. He could end up like Chips, and she couldn't let that happen.

He was silent for a moment, but she heard his breath quicken at her request and watched his mattress shift above her. "You know we ain't supposed to, Noakes will throw you out if he catches us."

"Please? Just for a little while?" He climbed down and slipped into her bed, pulling her to him and placing a soft kiss in her hair. She shoved her face into the crook of his neck and breathed in the smell of him, the same sweat and soot, ink and soap smell, and now that he was older, a hint of aftershave leftover from the previous morning, that became the smell of comfort to her in dance halls and secret adventures when she was fourteen. He tucked one of his arms under his head and the other stayed on her hip, holding her close to him but trying to be as chaste as he could. Noakes allowed her to stay in the bunk room on the condition that there was no "hanky panky" going on, but her need to be close to Scatter in case he slipped out of her fingers far exceeded her need for a bed in that moment.

Her long, lean arms wrapped up and around his head, her nails raking against his scalp. As his dark hair moved back, a low growl rumbled in the back of his throat. "Kiss," he warned, his voice husky and thick. Despite her worries, the sound of his want brought a lustful smirk to her lips and she repeated the action, slowly and gently dragging her fingernails from his forehead to the nape of his neck while kissing just at the cut of his jaw and shivered at the moan that he answered with. "Quit it. Youse gonna get us in trouble."

"When has that ever stopped me?" she mumbled, tasting the salt on his skin as she kissed her way back down his neck.

He chuckled and she gently bit at his collarbone, pulling a shocked gasp from him. "Never once, it usually makes you want to do something more."

"Exactly," she purred. "So why bother bossing me around?"

"Someone's got to keep that pride of yours in check and save you from yourself. God knows, you don't need saving from no one else." She giggled and punched him playfully without ever removing her mouth from his skin.

"I make sense when we're together." _Just hold me tonight so I can pretend you're not leaving,_ she pleaded in her head _._ She quickly busied herself, kissing behind his ear, nibbling his earlobe and letting her fingers toy with the knot in the piece of jute that held the key, so she didn't have to think those thoughts anymore.

"Wese together, Kiss. Always," he muttered, planting soft kisses on her face. "Remember? You always make sense with me." He shifted himself downward, putting their faces even and pressed his lips to hers. She greedily reciprocated, pulling his bottom lip into her mouth. Their legs intertwined and their hands frantically sought to touch every bit of skin between them, even though they were both still clad in their long underwear.

The sparks running through her veins and the pressure deep in the pit of her belly were doing an excellent job of keeping her mind off of her worries. She could finally let go and just act on instinct. Instincts that told her that she, in no uncertain terms, needed his shirt off his body. She groped at the hem, running her hands up his stomach. "Stop!" he suddenly gasped, pushing her against the wall and holding her at arms length. "We can't do this, not here, not now." His eyes were panicked and his breath came in pants.

The electricity of attraction left her body like a switch was flipped and she was left numb and cold. He finally said it, finally slipped up and let on that he was hiding something.

"Why not now? Why is now different?" He groaned, pulling her back in and fingered her hair while burying his face in her neck like a chastised child. "How long, Scat?" she whispered as they lay in the dark, holding each other tightly, feeling like if either one let go the other would be ripped away, never to return. She couldn't hold it in anymore, the question was eating away at her insides slowly but surely.

"How long what?" he asked the guilt weighing down the tone of his voice as he softly kissed her cheek.

"How much longer do I get before Dockside pulls you away, not to be seen or heard from again until they ditch your body on my doorstep?"

"What happened to Chips ain't gonna happen to me," he said, his normally jovial voice turning hard and cold and his body turning rigid in her arms. "Chips was a dumbass and a loner. He could barely hack being one of us; he was never gonna make it in the gangs."

Anger flushed her face and she pushed him away so hard that he slid off of the narrow bunk and to the floor. The boys began to shift and groan in their sleep as the thunk of their leader hitting the floorboard pulled them from their dreams. "And you will? You want this? Scat I just left the Convent a few years ago, I'm not going to go live under the thumb of some gang boss for the rest of my life."

He growled again, not the seductive, moaning growl from only moments before, but one of aggravation. He stood, yanking his pants off of his hook on the wall and began to put them on, never looking her way. He waved at her as he stalked to the window and she followed suit, pulling her pants on over her long underwear and heading outside. The grey light of dawn was just starting to warm the dark sky. They stood in the alley beside the building, glaring at each other in silence for awhile before Scatter snapped. "How do you even know about that?" He shoved his hair off his brow, leaving his hand on top of his head clenched full of deep, chocolate brown waves.

"How do you think?" she sassed.

"Spot."

"Among others. There's not a lot that goes on in this town that I don't know about Scatter. That's why we're strong, because I make it my business, and then your business, to know everything that I can about what goes on in these streets. I get the news and talk people down, stop the fights before they start and you fight the fights and make us likable. We're a team, but we can't be a team if we don't have trust. And we don't have trust if you're keeping secrets from me."

"We ain't got no trust if youse sending your little birds after me neither! You don't trust me to do whats best? You always did before!"

"You lied to me! I asked you what happened last week when you came home with all those bruises and you told me that you broke up the scuffle between Duke and Rustler over that floozy. But you didn't! The boys from Dockside did it and you didn't tell me. Spot told me about it and I checked with Rustler and Duke."

"I didn't want them knowing about you," he muttered. "I didn't want them coming after you too. Whether they keep me or not, I'll still get to see you."

"Yeah, if they let you live!"

"Kiss, I don't get a choice here! I got to show up when they collect me and fight my way out or say yes and keep my head down and hope that I can follow the rules better than Chips."

"Then we'll run! We'll get our train tickets and be gone before they can get you. We'll go pan for gold in Colorado or get a farm in Kansas. We can go anywhere and be anything, Ted! Don't you see? There's nothing holding us back but Brooklyn!" She threw her arms wide and swayed on her feet, the thought of all that freedom running away with her body until a flash of white on the fire escape caught her attention. "Spot!" she growled. The boy ducked back in the window. "Spot Conlon, I know you're there, now get down here." He stepped onto the fire escape, looking down at her with a scowl. The church bells were chiming five o'clock and Noakes would be up soon to wake the bunk room. He sauntered down with more swagger than any seven year old had any right to have and the arrogance of him, caught red handed spying on her private conversation flared her annoyance and she grabbed his arm more roughly than she meant to. "What are you doing here? Why aren't you in bed?"

"Where you and Scat going, Kiss?" he asked quietly, his voice surly and low. The little boy begging for one more song was gone, and in his place was a tiny person, too old, experienced and mistrusting to be a child, too small, fragile and sensitive to make it in the adult world alone.

"Nowhere, if I have any say!" she snapped, turning to send Scat a poisonous glare that he replied to by throwing his hands up in the air and turning his back on her. "Now what have I told you about listening in on me, huh? You have a whole borough you can listen to, but I told you to stop following me around and spying on me! This is between Scat and me. Its not your business."

"Youse gonna get on a train and leave?"

She let out an exasperated huff, "This is why I tell you not to listen to me! We're just talking!" The kid gave her a hurt glare and she softened up, like she always did where he was concerned. She squatted down in front of him and pressed her face in close next to his so that her words for only for his ears, her grip on his arm loosening. "If Scat and I ever buy train tickets, we'll buy three. Where I go, you two go. The three of us against the world, right kid? Don't worry, I ain't leaving you behind." She pulled away and gave him a long, serious look in his eyes, he searched her face, looking for the lie, but seemed convinced that she meant what she said. "Now please, go get ready to sell, and if you see me today while you're looking around, you stay away. Make sure you're looking and listening for all the good stuff that I miss, ok? I need those eyes and ears out there." He gave her another one of those searching looks, the ones that she knew were him looking for the lie, for the reason to stop trusting her, but seemed placated for the time being, and ran back up the fire escape. She turned back to Scat who still had his back turned. "Please," she whispered placing her hand on his shoulder blade. He shrugged it off and tensed his back for a moment before dropping the stance and letting his shoulders droop. "Please Teddy, I'd give up everything but the two of you."

He turned and smiled sadly, twice she called him his real name, and as he got older he found he liked to hear her say it. His hand reached out to push her wild hair back, but she ducked away, unwilling to accept affection until she had her answer. "We have the boys, they's our family and if I run, it puts them in danger and I can't have that on me conscience. They'll start taking the boys, the little ones like Spot if I run. Is that what you want?"

She froze, her arms wrapped tightly around her middle. "We really have no way out?"

"I got no way out, Marta. Me. You can do whatever you want. You're free. I made sure that you would be free. Stay here and run Brooklyn, go West and get your house and your grass or stay with me and be with me, no matter what I choose." Scat looked down at her, pleading with his deep, warm green eyes that she would understand, but she couldn't. He huffed and kicked a crate. "You don't get it because youse a girl and youse ain't been on the streets long enough, Kiss. All I got in this world is a reputation, a jar of pennies and a girl. I gotta protect what's mine."

"So do I," she snapped and stormed up the fire escape to get dressed.

OoOoOoO

 _A/N: Another flashback run amok, but really, who's going to say no to more sassy, street Marta and Baby Spot? The lullabies featured in this chapter are "For the Beauty of the Earth," music by Conrad Kocher and lyrics by Folliot S Pierpoint and "All Through the Night," music by Edward Jones and Lyrics by John Cieriog Hughes. I got some crazy bad news this week, and am using writing for some classic avoidance behavior, resulting in this lovely bit of fluff and fight. Spot Conlon is property of Disney._


	11. Chapter 11

Nips took extreme pleasure in waking the boys that first morning by running through the bunk room banging on an old washtub with a wooden spoon from the kitchen. If the boys hadn't figured out that something was up by then, they sure knew it when they fell out of their bunks that morning. They groaned as they made their way to the washroom, and somehow, Nips avoided the good soaking that he probably deserved and made it back downstairs where Trout and Marta waited. She leaned against the check in desk on her elbows, one ankle crossed over the other and raised an eyebrow at him with a sobering look on her face, but he just grinned. "When the cat is away, the mice will play," he joked. She kept her stone face but sucked her teeth in an attempt to hide her smile.

Even though a smile was crinkling the corners of her eyes, she was using that low, quiet, scary voice. "Try to remember that he left you in charge and that you do have to try to not make us all look like a bunch of idiots." His face straightened and his shoulders slumped. "I know Spot's led you to believe that this whole leader thing is a one man show and that it comes to him easily, but you're important now. You're a leader now, and you will be THE leader if we can't get Spot out of there in time. This won't work without all of us so don't give the boys reason to doubt you." Her eyes connected with his, her eyebrows raised, searching his face for understanding. She looked regal, with her long, slender neck and well carved face. Every one of the boys spent at least a few days in love with her, usually in the time before their voices dropped, but Nips felt like he was seeing her for the first time. She was beautiful and scary. As much as Spot was the King of Brooklyn, she was the Queen Mother.

He was saved from her attention when the boys thundered onto the landing above. They stumbled down the stair, still bleary eyed and grumbling about their rude wake up call. One of the older ones, Red, was about to make a comment to Marta about it, but the words fizzled out and died in his throat when the glint of sunlight off of the worn brass caught his eyes. The key hung there, as innocuous as could be, against Marta's cream colored blouse, her deep chestnut hair falling around it. She wasn't sure any of them were even breathing as they stared at it. "What are you bummers gawking at?" she demanded, making sure to put some biting Brooklyn drawl into her words. "You got papes to sell, now get outta here!" They all jumped a bit and looked at each other, before hustling out the door. Marta grabbed Pickle aside and held his hand while the others streamed out into the cold fall sunshine.

She knelt in front of the small boy and smiled at him. His black hair was still wet from washing his face, as was the collar of his shirt and his blue eyes were still hooded with sleep. "I need someone to go on a special mission for me Pick, and I chose you for the job. Are you up for it?" Nips rolled his eyes, wondering why Marta would jeopardize their whole plan to give the screw up kid an ego boost.

"Me, Miss Marta?" he squeaked. "Where'm I going?" She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and began to wipe away the dirt smudges from the day before that were somehow still all over his face despite looking like he fell headfirst into the washtub.

She grinned and started unbuttoning and re-buttoning his shirt so that it didn't hang three button holes longer on the one side, "Yeah you. I need you to get a message to Racetrack in Manhattan. Can you do it? Do you remember which one's Racetrack?"

"Sure I do!" he answered, his chest puffing out with pride at being trusted with an errand. "What do I gotta say?"

Nips stepped up and joined their little huddle on the floor, sitting instead of kneeling to put his face in closer with theirs. He raked a hand through his sandy hair and said, "You just say that Brooklyn wants to talk with him. That way he won't question who is calling him." He looked to Marta for confirmation and she nodded. "Don't say nothing else, just where and when."

"Go right now, before Race can get too far from their circulation office," she said, straightening his cap and tightening the knots in his bootlaces. "You don't tell anyone but Racetrack and you don't say anything besides 'Brooklyn wants to talk on the bridge at noon.' You got it?"

"Yes, Ma'am!" he chirped proudly and started to skip away.

Nips leaned over to Marta, "You're sure we can trust him to get there? I mean, he can barely dress himself alone some days." She thought for a moment and called Pickle back.

"Trout, go with him please. Make sure he gets there and stays on task." Trout glowered at her, hurt that she would put him on babysitting duty. She sighed, "You and Race are pals, Pickle needs to learn some responsibility, but this is too important to risk that he…well…gets in a pickle. Please, go." He sighed, nodded with a grumble and jogged off to catch up with the little boy.

Nips and Marta waited for the two to disappear down the street before standing up. "Haystack is watching over the brownstone like you asked. I'll drop some papes off with him before I sell mine and all of the other birds are in their regular places," Nips said, pulling his cap on and shrugging into his coat.

She nodded. "That was good thinking, not putting our birds on the Fox. We don't know who they've seen and who they haven't. If the Dockside boys recognized ours snooping around…" she paused and shuddered. "I'm not sure who it would be worse for, the boys they caught or Spot. We just have to hope that Race is willing to lend us some boys for a few days." Nips nodded. "You go get your papes."

"What about you? You told Stack to watch the brownstone, so whose going to watch your back?"

She grinned and patted his arm affectionally, "I know Spot thinks I need a babysitter, but I've been taking care of myself a long time." He looked terrified at the prospect of disobeying one of Spot's orders and she laughed at all of the emotions racing across his face. He was such a gentle giant, his smoky blue-green eyes widening at the thought of getting soaked by a scrawny sixteen year old. "I promise, I'm just going to be here, getting some work done in case the Children's Aid Society people drop by. I have to make it look like I'm still doing my job, same as you." He sighed in defeat and they parted ways, agreeing to meet at the entrance to the bridge at eleven thirty.

Racetrack was selling at the boxing ring when Pickle and Trout found him. Trout had realized quickly during the walk why Marta thought that Pickle needed a babysitter. The kid was skipping all over the place and Trout had to pull him out of the path of two separate carriages and a trolley car. He'd never been so happy to see Manhattan as he was when Race spotted them and pulled the stump of a cigar from his lips, "Hiya boys!" he greeted jovially. He sauntered over to them, his green wool coat covering his plaid waistcoat. He smirked at Trout, noticing how frustrated he seemed and then grinned at Pickle. "Hey Kid, Spot let you outta Brooklyn?" He spit in his palm and offered it to Pickle who looked like Race offered him a silver dollar. He was so used to being brushed off for being too little and too clumsy to do anything that Race greeting him like one of the guys made his day. "You ain't planning on causing no trouble while youse here, are ya?" Race asked as Pickle returned the shake.

Pickle flicked his eyes to Trout who shook his head. "I ain't causing trouble, Ise delivering a message."

"Oh yeah, and what's Trout here for? A song and dance act?" Trout rolled his eyes and threw a lewd hand gesture at Race who chuckled and put his cigar back in his mouth. Pickle giggled at Race's joke and started to chase a piece of newsprint that was blowing down the street until he was hooked by his collar and brought back to stand with the older boys. Trout signed _go on_ to remind Pickle what he was there for.

He squared his tiny shoulder and and put a comical attempt at a stony Spot-like face on. When he spoke he tried to put some bite in his squeaky voice, "Brooklyn wants to talk on the bridge at noon." He looked to Trout, who winked at him. The little boy's stomach gave a hearty growl and the two older ones laughed before digging in their pockets for a few pennies to give him and he trotted off to find himself some breakfast.

Race turned to Trout and clapped him on the back. "What's this about, Trout?" The taller boy cheekily pretended to lock his mouth with a key and held up his hands in innocence. "That's cute, Brooklyn, real cute," Race chuckled. "Youse really gonna make me wait?" Trout shrugged. "And I thought we was pals!" Trout grinned and spat in his palm, offering it to Race as a peace offering. Race returned it with a crooked grin. They were an odd set of friends, one rarely shutting up and the other never speaking, but they were both harmonica playing card sharps who found out that they got along well at gatherings. Race's poker face was the only one that Trout could never read and Trout's face was so expressive that he was a champion bluffer. "Come on, Trout! Youse really gonna let me go into a meeting with Spot blind?" The quiet teen paused for a moment before he drew and x over his heart with his finger and shrugged his broad shoulders apologetically. "Sworn to secrecy, eh? Great. My _favorite_ kind of dealing with his royal highness. You owe me one."

They watched, chuckling, as Pickle bought himself a roll from a bakery and then forgot to eat it while he chased pigeons down the road. "That kid has the attention span of a housefly," Race laughed and Trout nodded in agreement. He could feel Race's eyes on him, questioning him. He raised his thick, black eyebrows and looked pointedly back at the short statured seventeen year old. "I been hearing things, Trout. Everyone's hearing things about what's going on over there. I know youse sworn to secrecy, but can you at least tell me if the rumors is true?" Trout thought for a moment and signed _go on. "_ They's saying that Spot's disappeared, that someone else is wearing that stupid, piece of shit key that you all treat like a crown." He waited and watched his old friend for a reaction, but Trout managed to blank his face as he thought about how to answer.

Finally, he sighed and pointed to Race and then to his own eyes, _you'll see._ Race checked his watch. "I gotta get these sold," he said lifting his stack of papers from his side. "You two hanging around to head to the bridge or headed back?" Trout checked his own watch and gestured for Race to hand over the papes. Race's face lit up, "Hey thanks, Trout!" Race handed them over and started to walk away, but Trout put a hand on his chest and glared at him accusingly. "Awright, awright, we'll split the take fifty-fifty. Geez, what do you think I am, a cheat?"

Trout nodded, grinning like a fool, and put two fingers to his lips to call Pickle back over with a shrill whistle while Race snickered. When the little boy arrived, Trout knelt in front of him and gathered all the patience he could muster. Pickle almost never understood him, because the kid couldn't pay attention long enough to watch, and couldn't read well enough to write a note to. He wished he was brave enough to just try to say what he wanted, but he couldn't bring himself to embarrass himself in front of Race with his stuttering and mumbling. He pointed to Pickle and walked his fingers and then pointed to Race, and then made a fist and pretended to kiss it. Pickle stared at him dumbfounded and he buried his face in his hands growling in frustration. "He said that youse walking with me to the bridge while he sells my papes," Race translated, rolling his eyes. "But I dunno what that last thing was with the kiss."

Pickle's eyes lit up and he grinned as he blurted out, "That's K…" He was abruptly cut off when Trout leapt up and tackled him, clapping one large hand over his mouth and the other on the back of his head. The larger boy scowled, locking eyes with him and staring him down until Pickle nodded. He had to hope that the kid would keep his trap shut.

"I don't like this secret business, Trout," Race said warily as he watched the two Brooklynites get up off the sidewalk. "Something don't feel right."

Trout pulled some paper out of his pocket and wrote: _you trust me, right?_

"Yeah, I trust you, but why can't you just tell me what's going on?"

 _not my secret. I promised. nothing bad's gonna happen. we just need help. hear us out_

Race nodded and Trout let out a breath of relief. He checked his watch again and motioned that the other two needed to get moving before he grabbed Pickle by the collar again and pulled the kid's suspender strap up through his coat collar and handed it to Race. The little captive scowled, but Trout scribbled: _hold on to that, you'll thank me later._ Race chuckled again and gave Pickle's suspenders a snap like he was cracking the reins of a carriage horse. "Let's get a move on, Kid. We don't want to keep Brooklyn waiting _."_

 _XxXxXxX_

 _A/N: What do you do when you feel like you need to lighten things up, have a little wit and comic relief but still move the plot forward? You pull Race into the mix, thats what. Maybe it's because its Race and maybe it's because I needed a little humor in my life. I guess we'll never know. Race and Spot aren't mine, I borrowed them from Disney and make absolutely nothing (unless you count making myself a little crazy) from writing about them._


	12. Chapter 12

Nips and Marta watched Race approach, holding a flailing, skipping, jumping Pickle by the rear strap of his suspenders. Nips chuckled and mumbled something about Trout teaching Race a valuable lesson about watching Pickle. But Marta couldn't laugh. Her  
stomach was tied in knots. Dealing with her own boys who had respect for her as the house manager, and who respected the key and Spot's wishes was one thing, but gaining the trust of another newsie was entirely different. He might see her as just  
some old broad trying to relive her glory days, and her heart lurched as she realized that she might be exactly that. "You do the talking," she murmured, "he knows you." Her hand clenched around the key so hard that the blade of it bit into her hand.  
She stood straight and tall like her corset was laced too tightly, but she wasn't wearing a corset. She might be able to scrub floors in one, but it sure as hell made it harder to sink a good punch when boning was trying to stab it's way through her  
ribcage. She was just so nervous that her muscles wouldn't relax into the slouch she adopted as a teenager.

"No," Nips disagreed cooly, "it has to be you. The leader talks. If you let me do it then we look weak. Brooklyn is never weak." She nodded and let the key fall back on it's string while her pale lips drew into a thin line. The tails of her coat flew  
out behind her. Even thought the sun shone, the wind blew in cutting and cold off of the water. She was a strange sight in her fitted, ladies coat, it's navy blue wool trimmed with black piping skimming over her curves but men's grey windowpane paid  
trousers sticking out the bottom. Instead of a cabby hat, she wore a black velvet tam that slouched over her left eye. Her hair lifted off her back and shoulders and blew about wildly, puffing and frizzing in the moist air coming off the river. Somehow,  
as their feet moved forward and the moment became less of an idea in her head and more of a reality, she was able to take a deep breath and when she let it out, her shoulders slouched and her hips began to sway with confidence. She wasn't old after  
all, even though she was well into "old maid" years by society's standards. She was still young and full of fire and she was smarter than she was the first time she went through this.

They met in the middle of the bridge and Race's black eyes looked her up and down in confusion. She stood still, allowing him to take inventory of her features and process his confusion. Seeing the short statured, dark haired kid in front of her, she  
remembered his short time with them in Brooklyn, but it was duringthe time when she was just the school teacher. The boys weren't required to attend lessons and Race already knew how to read and write at eleven, so he put his effort into things  
like cards and dice during lesson time. She doubt he remembered her at all and her memories of him were vague at best. She knew that Spot and Trout liked him and that Jack spoke well of him when the Manhattanites visited from time to time. Nips had  
filled her in on his personality and tendencies as they walked across the bridge. He looked to Nips who jerked his head towards Marta, letting Race know who was running the show. Finally, his eyes fell to rest on the key and he swallowed loudly. "Ma'am?"  
he greeted timidly, taking his hat off and toying with it in his hands.

"Racetrack," she answered cooly and spat in her hand, holding it out to him. "My name is M…Kisser," her breath caught in her throat as she stumbled over her own name. Who was she? Kisser? or Marta? Why couldn't they be seamless parts of a whole like they  
were for Spot? She felt the words start to pour out without her permission, "and I'm running Brooklyn again." His eyes widened as he put two and two together, remembering the legend that she was when he was a kid. "I need your help, Race; Spot needs  
your help."

He lit his cigar and studied her again for a moment before returning the spit shake. "No offense, but I'm getting really tired of you and your boys and all of this hocus pocus, smoke and mirrors bull…loney, Miss Kisser, Ma'am. Could someone please just  
tell me what the heck is going on?"

She smiled in a charming but rather terrifying way all of her fear and insecurity draining from her body. His wit and snark snapped something inside her and allowed her to embrace who she needed to be to make it through this. "How's this, Higgins? I'll  
give it to you straight if you can promise to not say 'ma'am' to me even one more time."

He gulped again as Nips tried to hide a snicker behind his hand. She reached out and whacked her second in the stomach with the back of her hand, eliciting a small _oof_ from him. "Sure thing, Kisser," Race answered attempting to sound casual, but  
his hands, twisting and destroying his cap gave him away. She smiled again, and he couldn't help but feel like a mouse being smiled at by a lion who was coiled to pounce. As much as Spot made everyone nervous with his cold eyes and his impenetrable  
stare, this woman was downright terrifying, but she was smiling at him….

She reached out and pulled Pickle towards her, smirking as Race jumped back like she might bite him. She gently moved the little boy over in front of Nips who took him by his suspenders. The rush of power that flooded her at Racetrack's fear was giddying.  
"What do you know about the Dockside Boys?"

"I heard some things," he answered, putting his cap back on and shoving his hands in his pockets non committaly.

"Things like they're a bunch of thugs who steal kids and force them to join their gang? Or things like they tried to beat your face in last summer at The World?" Nips asked, his voice bitter. She shot him a look telling him to stand down and he obeyed,  
ducking his tall head.

"They've been preying on Brooklyn Newsies for their recruiting for years, mostly the leaders. They give us a weeks warning, pick us off the street and give us the choice to join or fight our way to freedom." She was calm as she explained their situation.

"So why don't you run?" Race demanded, blowing into his cupped fists to warm his hands. "And what's all this got to do with me?"

"When we tried, they threatened to start taking the little boys, little ones like Pickle, until we came back. We weren't willing to risk that they were bluffing." she answered. Pickle stopped playing and looked up at them with big eyes, realizing the  
stakes at hand for the first time. "At least the leaders stand a chance of making it out. I don't even want to think of what Mick would do to the little ones."

"Running don't stop nothing anyway," Nips spat. "They'll just take the next leader and Kisser, Spot and I ain't gonna let that happen. We ain't gonna stand for it no more." She found herself admiring the leader he was showing that he might be able to  
be. Standing in Spot's shadow, she never gave him much thought, but he was doing well.

"How the hell does Spot have a dog in this fight if he's with them?" Race cried out in exasperation his arms flinging out wildly and his thin lips grimacing over his crooked teeth. Marta explained to him what she knew about Dockside and about Spot's plan  
and his note, which she let him read. His eyes scanned Spot's narrow script and he scrubbed them with the heels of his hands when he was done. "Fucking Conlon," he muttered under his breath.

"My thoughts, exactly," Nips agreed with a wry grin. Marta continued, explaining that they only had a few days left before Spot would be challenged, that it hadn't happened yet because he got hurt when they picked him up.

"So Spot's in trouble, and you two think you can save him?" Race asked.

"We have to try," she answered, gathering her hair into her hands and twisting it over her shoulder. "All we need from you is a few newsies, maybe four, who you trust who can sell over by the Dockside hangout and bring back information for us. They know  
all my boy's faces."

"Why can't you do it, Sweetheart? Ain't like they's looking for a lady." He smirked, thinking he finally outsmarted her, but the look on her face wiped the triumph from his. Her eyes, instead of being piercing and gold like a cat's were distant, like  
she was looking at things he couldn't see.

"Because she's our leader, dumbass! Spot left her the key," Nips snarled also noticing the far away look in her eyes. He and Trout had spent the past two days pulling Kisser out of hiding and they didn't have time to go through it all again. She couldn't  
suck back into herself now. Poor Trout hadn't even slept yet, he couldn't let all of his friend's work be for nothing.

She put her hand on his chest and pushed Nips back a bit, her touch smoothing down his bristling anger. Her eyes focused again and she glared at Race with fiery intensity. "There's that, and there's the part where I'm still standing here even though I  
was a leader, telling you everything I know about their initiation rites. They know my face better than any of the boys, because I'm the only one still alive who made it out the other side. Me being there before the right moment is a death sentence  
for both Spot and me." Nips stared at her and felt like he couldn't swallow past his Adam's apple. He'd never heard this part of the story, because Spot hadn't. She never spoke of it to anyone. He arms wrapped around her middle tightly and her shoulders  
shrugged protectively towards her ears. When she spoke again, her voice was quiet and sounded small and glare dropped to her boots and she suddenly seemed very tired. "We have to stop this Racetrack, and we're asking you to help  
us. Brooklyn and 'Hattan have always had each other's back in the end, for as long as I've been around. I'm not asking for fighters or big numbers. Nothing crazy. Just some boys with sharp eyes and ears and good heads on their shoulders. Can you help  
us?"

Race studied both Kisser and Nips, knowing from the tells on their faces that they were both dead serious. He knew that Jack would have said yes to her about ten minutes prior, but he wasn't Jack. Jack would have said yes the moment he saw she was a girl,  
but this was serious. She was asking him to involve his boys with a gang. On the other hand, Spot was his friend, at least he thought they were friends, he wasn't sure Spot thought the same way. Spot was odd like that, a guy never quite knew where  
he stood with him. But she was right, Spot showed up for them when they needed it and he wasn't about to punk out when the favor was called up to be returned. "I ain't sending any of my boys into something this serious blind. Its gotta be their choice."

She nodded, "Wise decision, Kid. You think on it, talk to your boys, but we need and answer by tonight. So that we can get eyes on The Fox starting tomorrow. We know where they're keeping Spot and we're keeping an eye on him, but we need more information  
on their comings and goings and especially on Mick."

"I'll do my best to get you four," he answered. "They'll be at the bunkhouse by nightfall."

She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small coin purse. "Pay for Trout and make sure he says in 'Hattan tonight and sleeps. He's been up for two days straight, I don't want him making the trip back today. The kid deserves a break." She handed Race  
a nickel to give to Mr. Kloppman for Trout's bed.

"I always remembered you being nice when I was there. You was nice to me even though I wouldn't go to lessons. You sure you want to get caught up in this?" His dark eyes shone with genuine concern.

"I'm only nice when I have to be. This is my fight and I'm finishing it, with or without your help. It will just be easier with."

He whistled long and low, "No wonder Spot's such a hard ass. I see where he gets it now."

"Scary, ain't it?" Nips asked. They spit shook on their plans and Race headed back to Manhattan to settle up with Trout, but the trio from Brooklyn stood their ground for a few moments as Kisser looked out over the water. "You think they'll show?" Nips  
asked.

"Yes," she answered resolutely. "He knows Spot needs him." A soft whimper distracted her. Pickle stood very close to her leg, trying to silence his own tears. She knelt down in front of him and pulled him close. "Easy, Pickle. Nips and I aren't going  
to let anything happen to you. You're going to be safe, because we aren't running away." He nodded into her shoulder but his tears came all the harder.

"What about Spot? Is he gonna get hurt?"

"Spot's strong," Nips answered, patting the kid on the back. "He'll be fine."

"He didn't teach me to shoot yet, and I learned to tie my boots!" Pickle wailed.

Nips chuckled, "We'll have Spot back soon enough, and if we don't, I'll teach you to shoot, kid." He then swung Pickle around to ride on him piggy back and they began their walk back to the Brooklyn side of the bridge to wait for dusk. True to Racetrack's  
word, three Manhattan boys knocked at the Brooklyn lodging house door just before nightfall. Mush, Snipeshooter and Itey were all signed in and ushered into Marta's sitting room to explain their job while they were there. The plan was finally in action,  
and Kisser was ready to face Scatter and all of the things she never told him about her time with Dockside ten years earlier.

XxXxXxX

 _A/N: Hooray for double update saturday! Yeah, this would have been a beast if I had left it and chapter 11 as one chapter like they started, like 6,000 words. Yikes._ ** _livelearnlovesing_** _and I were discussing whether or not Race's time in Brooklyn before going to Manhattan was canon or not. I decided to mention it in case it is, lol. I wonder if its canon, or one of those things that has started to feel like canon after 24 years of fandom, or even one of those merging of fact and fiction things since Racetrack Higgins was a real guy. As always, thanks to my two reviewers, livelearnlovesing and Joker is Poker with a J, I love you guys and thank you for your kind words._


	13. Chapter 13

It was the god damned fried eggs that let him know his day was destined to be shit. All bad days started with the smell of fried eggs. He hadn't smelled that terrible smell in and still had plenty of bad days to show for it, but all days that started out with the smell of cooking butter and eggs sunny side up ended badly. He woke up from a nightmare, the nightmare, his head still aching in an annoyingly dull way, just painful enough to always be vying for more of his attention than he was willing to give it. With the rich smell in the air, he couldn't tell if he was really awake or if he was still trapped in the dream. He liked living at the Lodging House, it never smelled like things that made him unsure of where he was when he woke up. The old memories made bile rise in his throat and pulled him out of bed. He staggered to the washstand just in time to empty his stomach into the porcelain washbowl.

He was still clad only in the skivvies that Darcy dug up for him the night Scat dragged him in and the string at the waist was tied precariously loose around his hips. He wasn't even sure how long ago that night with Scat in the dark dirty room was. His arms shook, bracing him on the washstand as he let his head dip low to try to breathe the nausea back under control. Every breath just brought more of that smell into his body. "Better watch your assets, Sweet Cheeks," Darcy teased from the doorway. He didn't move to yank his shorts higher on his hips, he didn't care that she could see his rear. She'd seen everything else so what did it matter? "When youse done tossing your cookies, I made you and I breakfast while I was makin' Mick's. We get eggs here everyday, ain't it fancy?"

"Get that shit outta here," he choked as he felt a second round of heaving pressing it's way up. She scurried out with the plate and he managed to choke back his gagging long enough to open the window. Outside it was grey and cold. The cold wind cut through the thick, hot smell of salty fat and protein and cleared the air in the room. He swiped at his running eyes and nose and pulled the sharp air into his lungs. It stopped the shake in his muscles long enough to reach up and push a damp string of hair off his face. The chill on his skin comforted him, the prickling of gooseflesh comforting him. Cold was who it said it was, icy and scathing, no more and no less.

He'd begun to shiver when she returned and set something down on the furniture behind him. He watched out of the corner of his eye, as she picked up the washbasin and carried it down the hall to the washroom to dispose of it. He was surprised that she could handle something so vile without so much as a crinkle of her nose. "Never seen no one puke from the smell of eggs before," she said, almost timidly, when she came back. She paused and he could hear the wicked teasing smile in her voice, "Well, my mother when she was pregnant, but no one else. You ain't knocked up, are you Conlon? 'Cause that would sure put a wrench in Mick's plans for you."

He snorted sardonically, "No such luck," but refused to give her any information or any further encouragement beyond that. She was just his keeper until Mick decided to try to kill him. He didn't owe her a damn thing.

She stepped up behind him, placing one of her tiny hands on his shoulder and the other under his other arm. "Come on, you'll catch your death standing here in the cold with no clothes on. Not to mention, that you're probably shocking the neighbors into a tizzy." She tried to guide him back to the bed, but he violently pulled away from her touch.

He moved away from the window and back to the bed, snapping, "What? The neighbors don't know they live across from a whorehouse?" He collapsed onto the soft mattress and saw the tray she left with toast, coffee and water on the nightstand. She shivered in the cold air and the wake of his scathing commentary for a moment before stalking over to slam the window shut.

"It ain't a whorehouse and I ain't. . .It's Mick's house. I live here and he makes sure I got food and clothes so long as I cook and clean and look after the boys when they need patching up." For the fist time in any of their talks, her voice held no malice, it was soft and full of shame.

"And bed them when they ask," he sneered. Her face paled and she turned away from him. "I reckon whether youse taking gold and silver or food and shelter in return for those kind of services it still makes you a whore." He watched her for a moment and felt a tiny sliver of shame in his gut. Marta would have punched him any one else besides him for saying something so awful. He got away with a lot, being her favorite, but he knew she wouldn't let something that awful slide regardless of never having given him more than a cuff on the head before. "Don't touch me again," he mumbled, even though she deserved an apology. She wouldn't get one because he hated apologizing almost as much as he hated fried eggs and tenement hallways.

But Darcy Reynolds wasn't one to take things lightly. Her watery, green eyes lit up with anger as she threw the water from the glass she brought up in his face. "You arrogant son of a bitch piece of trash!" she shrieked. "Who are you to judge me? You ain't no better!"

He raised an eyebrow and smirked, "Ain't I?" He looked her up and down. "Flouncing around in your drawers night and day, how long's it been since you was outside this hell hole, eh? Even a two bit saloon girl goes out now and then. And me?" His smirk grew wider, and his eyes glowed threateningly and he raised his arms wide and regal. "When I ain't busy being kidnapped by your boss, I'm free as a god damned bird! So, yeah, I am better than you, because I'd rather die than be under the thumb of an asshole like Mickelson. Go get my clothes, I ain't gonna sit around in me skivvies all day just 'cause you do."

The flash and flare of her anger mellowed to a low simmer and allowed a small, cruel smile to curl her mouth. "Sorry, Toots, no can do." His hands fell back to the mattress and he sunk back into the pillows as he glared at her. Her hair was brushed and curled, her cheeks and lips were pinked with rouge and her eyes were lined with coal. Her black stockings were mended and her chemise seemed whiter and less marred than it was the last time he noticed.

"You got time to wash your own clothes and paint your face, but you ain't got time for mine?"

Her small smile grew to a mean spirited grin. "Oh, I had plenty of time, and I did wash them. Washed them, dried them, mended and ironed them. "

"So give 'em back!" he snapped, annoyed by her games.

"Like I said, no can do." She stood up and strutted seductively to the washstand where she grabbed a towel which she threw over his face to wipe up the remnants of his water. "I'll give em back when Mick tells me to and not a second sooner. The quicker you learn your place around here, the better."

"You think I don't know my place in all of this?" he asked, pulling the cloth from his face and throwing it down. "You think I don't know this ain't normal treatment for a new guy?" he snapped. "Warm bed, clean sheets, hot food. You think I don't know that this ain't how the boys around here live all the time? I'm not stupid, Darcy. I know my place. My place is at 61 Poplar St with my boys and Kisser. This little play house youse got set up here is nice and all but I know that the moment I say yes its back to bunkbeds and day old bread. Which is why I ain't saying yes, because I got those things for a nickel a night and no strings attached back home. There, I ain't gotta beat up the kid who takes my place in a few years to get em."

She snickered at him, "You really are an idiot if you think that what you got out there is freedom." The door downstairs closed loudly and her eyes grew wide and fearful. "Stay in this room, do not come out. Whatever you hear is not your business." She scurried out, closing the door behind her. He looked at the coffee and toast beside him and wanted to throw both out the window, but his yammering stomach begged for food. He broke the slice in half and then in half again. He stared at the quarter left in his hand as if it might bite him back, but tentatively brought it to his mouth. It was gone too quickly, but he wouldn't let himself eat the rest. The coffee was lukewarm, but sweetened with sugar and cream and took the edge off his hunger. He wondered how long it had been since the day he left the Lodging House with Trout and Nips.

Down the hall a door slammed and then he heard Darcy, whimpering, pleading and crying, but he couldn't make out the words. He pulled himself back up and out of the bed, finding that each time he got up the stiffness and wave of unsteady dizziness got less and less. He wrapped the dingy quilt off the bed around his shoulders. He hadn't gone this long without getting dressed since he was still in diapers and he didn't like it. With his ear pressed to the door, he still couldn't make out what her frightened voice was saying, but her heard her cry out as her body was slammed back against her own door. She continued to cry and yelp, but he couldn't listen anymore. He backed away, his eyes never leaving the door. His hands, his knees and even his breaths were shaking. This was too much, too familiar. He didn't stop backing up until his back hit the window, where he perched on the window ledge and turned his face to press against the icy glass.

The sounds coming from down the hall didn't slow, didn't calm. They went on and on and two hours passed since Darcy left. Her distress only pausing for a few moments at a time. Moaning, crashing, groaning, screaming and the bed frame banging against the wall and he was desperate to block it all out. His stomach turned and tied in knots and every time his eyes closed he saw the dark corridor from his dreams. For a moment he wanted to suck into himself and sing one of Marta's songs until they stopped, but he was a man now. He opened his eyes and saw a kid with a shock of straight, flax blonde hair on his head looking up at him. "Stack!" he yelped, under his breath. Bird or not, the kid was not supposed to know where he was. But the possibility lit a fire under him. His boys were coming for him.

He hitched the borrowed drawers up around his narrow hips before storming out into the hallway and banging on the door that Darcy was crying behind. It didn't matter that he didn't really like Darcy, that he found her vapid and annoying. He wouldn't stand for a woman being harmed that way. Not that way. Not ever again. A trembling Darcy opened the door just a crack and wiped the tears from her face. "Spot, go back to your room and rest. I told you not to come out!" she hissed urgently, peeking behind her. She clutched her velvet robe, it's gauzy folds the only thing hiding her nudity. Her lips were swollen and newly formed bruises were blooming from the milky paleness of her skin.

"Like anyone could rest with the two of you carrying on like you are!" he scoffed. "I ain't gonna sit on my ass while you get the crap kicked out of you." He reached in and grabbed her arm as gently as he could while still forcefully pulling her out the door. He traded places with her and barged into the room.

The man on the bed glared back at him through blue eyes that seemed too light for his deeply tanned skin. His black hair was winged with silver at the temples. "Spot Conlon, we meet at last," he said, sounding none too pleased to be meeting Spot on terms that weren't his own. "You've interrupted a meeting between my employee and I, now get out. I'll be with you in a moment. Darcy, get back in here."

"She ain't coming back in this room till you ain't in it anymore," Spot challenged.

"My house, Kid," Mick answered, standing up, unashamed by his own nudity. It was a show of dominance, to walk over and tower above the steely eyed boy. "My rules. As a guest in my house, you will follow my rules."

"A guest?" Spot barked in incredulous laughter. "I'm a guest? If guests get their brains bashed in and their clothes stolen and housekeepers get attacked for hours on end while they yell 'no,' I'd hate to see how enemies get by!"

Mick smiled. "Ask your….what is she, because claiming she's just your house manager is about as truthful as Darcy's claims that she's my housekeeper." He shot the girl a venomous look and she cringed. "She's not your leader anymore. So what is Kisser? Your friend? Your sister?" Spot's face began to burn and Mick snickered as he bristled. "You ask Kisser how we treat enemies, if you see her again. Because you'll know soon enough, first hand, how my enemies are treated if you remain intent on refusing my offer."

"You leave her outta this! I'd gladly be your enemy if it meant getting the hell out of here and away from you," Spot hissed, seething at Mick's mention of Kisser, at the thought of him hurting her.

Mick chuckled and turned his back to start getting dressed. His mannerisms were casual, as if he had conversations this heated everyday while having a morning romp. "Don't you know anything boy? Even if you get out of here, there is no away from me. I own Brooklyn. While you sit at your docks and call yourself a king, I have the money and the manpower to back the claim." He buttoned his trousers and turned back, taking large strides to cross the room.

Spot refused to stand down as Mick advanced on him. The older man got close, too close for Spot's liking, but he stood his ground. "Pity what Niko did to your pretty face, you would have been a favorite among the dancing girls at the Fox" Mick crooned again, "but I suspect more damage will be done to it sooner rather than later." Without warning, he reached out and grabbed the back of Spot's neck hard, digging his fingers deep into the muscle. Spot hissed as the pain in his head grew stronger. "You learn some respect while you are here. You're not the king while you're in my castle." With that, he threw the boy to the ground hard. Spot's face hit the floor and his vision blurred. His stomach lurched as his already injured head tried to recover from the hit.

"Mick!" Darcy yelped and ran to Spot's side. "You'll kill him!"

"He's tougher than you're giving him credit for, Darling Darcy," Spot cringed at the terrible name. He pulled his arm away from Darcy's hand, but much more gently than he did earlier in the day when she tried to touch him. He looked at her steadily and gave her a slight nod and she smiled an nearly imperceptible smile in return. By this time, Mick was buttoning his shirt. "You'll need all the gall, piss and vinegar you can gather to make it out of here. Only one person has ever made it through the gauntlet. She was one of so very few who tried and I made her's a nightmare. Make no mistake that I can make yours just as bad. If I don't get new blood in my ranks, strong and worthy blood, the kind that can come up through and eventually lead, then I make sure that my boys get a spectacle that they won't forget and that will keep the lower ones in their places for a few more years. Impress me and you'll get your chance with me"

"Nothing interests me less than impressing the likes of you," Spot sneered, spitting on the floor at Mick's feet. Mick just chuckled as he stepped over them and strode out the door.

Darcy stood first, still clutching her wrap around her naked body, and then pulled him to his feet. "You just stood up to the leader of the Dockside Boys in your underwear and didn't bat an eyelash," she said in monotone, while he tried to stop the room from swaying so violently.

"He shouldn't be hurting you," he growled, catching hold of her shoulder to save himself from falling, "and its his own fault I didn't have me clothes." She grabbed his hand and looked hard into his eyes, waiting for permission to help him. He sighed and nodded and she wrapped his lanky arm over her narrow shoulders to help him back to bed. She dropped him off on his bed and left the room to go clean herself up. When she returned, she had on a navy blue skirt and a white blouse with a ratty, plum purple knit shawl around her shoulders and her hair tied back. Her face was scrubbed clean and pink, which only made the light bruises Mick left on her look darker. She didn't say anything, just came and sat on a dining chair that she drug in from elsewhere in the house and lit a cigarette.

He watched the long tendril of smoke rise from the tip of her cigarette and curl towards the ceiling. He wanted one, the craving clutching at his ribs and making his hands twist the sheets in his fists, but he refused to ask her for anything. She'd proven that too much had been taken from her already. Her eyes were empty, like her soul had vacated her body and the only time she moved was to raise the smoking roll of tobacco to her lips as she stared out the window. She sat, curled like a cat with her legs tucked underneath her and her clumsily knit shawl pulled tightly around her body. "God damn you, Spot Conlon," she murmured, never looking away from the window.

"Me? What the hell did I do?"

"I spent years pushing the disgust at myself back to the back of my mind. I tell myself that he loves me, that it's better than sleeping on the streets or dying in a factory. I push all of the bad thoughts down as far as they can go just so i can live with myself for another day and everyone else who comes in is just trying to do the same thing, so no one ever points it out to me. I make do thinking of how fancy i feel getting to eat eggs every morning when they're eating watery porridge at home and I roll around in my feather bed and remind myself constantly of the folded blanket on the floor I slept on with with three sisters. I do everything I can to only see the good part of where I am so I can make it through another day. And then some jackass kid on a high horse with a big mouth comes in and points out all the shit that I was trying not to think about and suddenly all I can do is think about it, think about what I've done to myself. And I can't help but hate the person I see in the mirror, all because some punk kid has a death wish and doesn't care who he takes down with him."


	14. Chapter 14

Scat walked into he Fox with a sigh. The guys that were the closest thing he had to friends sat over to one side. Chapman and Schmitz were younger than him by six or seven years. He'd been stuck at the "kids table" for ages, but it suited him just fine. He trained up the younger ones, collected the fresh meat and then let them pass on up the ranks before he could get too attached to them. He told himself he stopped missing real friends after a few years, once he learned that they were more trouble than they were worth. When their bodies were dragged from the river it didn't feel like it killed a bit of him because they weren't friends. They were just guys that he shared a bunkhouse and a few drinks with. He nodded his head at them as a greeting and ordered a beer from a pettiskirt and corset clad dancing girl with a tray.

After a childhood spent with a tight knit pack of boys, life with Dockside was a lonely one and it turned him sour. Seeing Kiss again, seeing Spot reminded him of how lonely he was. Seeing Spot with his face swollen and bruised, his eyebrow split open from hitting a wall too hard and his jaw scraped up made something boil up inside of him. He tried to push those feelings away.

He couldn't save Spot, any help he tried to give would only make Mick come down on the kid harder and would be a death sentence for Scat himself. As he drank his beer, he couldn't help but wonder if it would be worth it. Would he feel better about his waste of a life if it ended to save Spot's for Marta? The answer was undoubtedly yes, but if his death wouldn't save the kid then both his life and his death would be a waste and Marta would never forgive him for that.

Schmitz snickered as he pointed across the room. "Boss kicked the shit outta Niko because of what he did to that kid."

Scat followed his gaze across the room to where Niko sat with both his eyes blacked, his nose swollen, sitting awkwardly to try to keep from disturbing cracked ribs and anger flared up in his belly. "Serves the fucker right," he growled into his glass as he took a drink. "The kid barely knew his own name when I took him from the basement to the house. Niko almost killed him."

The two guys on the other side of the table shared a look between them before Chapman scoffed. "You going soft on us, Painten?"

"I ain't!" he snapped defensively. "But Niko deserves whatever he gets."

"Everyone knows who that kid is, Ted. He's your girl's pet." Schmitz voice was soft hoping to save him from a belting. Everyone warned him not to breathe a word about the girl to Painten unless he wanted a close up view of Ted's meaty fist.

"I ain't had a girl for more than a night in ten years," he grumbled, his heart aching at the truth of that statement. His life really was shit. He ordered and drank another beer, and then switched to whiskey. Then he ordered another. And another. After the fourth, he staggered the few blocks to the brownstone and banged on the door. The cold wind didn't cut through the hot haze of booze that surrounded him and did nothing to cool the urgency boiling in his gut.

Darcy answered the door wearing actual clothes instead of that ugly old robe she loved so much. She even had her hair pinned up, but her eyes were shadowed and tired. Her brow furrowed and she groaned as she asked, "What are you doing here, Ted? Mick ain't here."

"I know, 's why I'm here," he slurred. "I wanna talk to Spot."

She shut the door a bit, "You can't be here unless youse on official business, Ted, you know that. Go back to the bunkhouse and sleep it off."

He shoved his body against the door, flinging her to the side. "I ain't here to see you, so ain't neither of us gonna get in no trouble."

She caught herself before she fell and grabbed his arm, "You know the rules and you know why he made them!"

But he pushed her off and continued trying to get to the stairs, "And its a stupid rule! Just like all the others!" he bellowed. "He can pass you around like a community drinking cup when it suits him, but he catches me kissing you one time and I'm banned from being around you? He wants new guys or to scare the crap outta us, so he steals a kid off the street to torture? It's wrong Darcy! You know it's wrong, and I might not be able to stop it, but I can at least talk to the kid before he has to go through it! Now quit hanging on me!"

Her eyes were wide and fearful as she listened to him rant. If Mick heard him talk like that, he was as good as dead. "Ted, I'm begging you, youse drunk. Go sleep it off somewheres. Don't do nothing stupid."

"I'm at my best when Ise doing something stupid," he said, stopping in his tracks and smiling dopily. "That's what she said." Marta called him stupid because Marta loved him in her own weird way. She never let a single ounce of his idiocy pass her by without notice. "I'm going to see the kid. I owe it to her."

"No, you are not," she hissed, ignoring his nonsense, "because if you get caught upstairs it ain't just you thats gonna catch hell for it. Me and him will get the shit kicked outta us too, and I ain't sure he can take another hit right now. He was doing just fine the other day until Mick threw him down and now it's like all the fight is drained out of him. He's hurt. Back off at least until he can handle the consequences."

Scat laughed heartily, scaring Darcy enough to make her take a step away from him. He was so much bigger than her and so even tempered normally. "That kid has more fight in him than any one person should be allowed. It ain't gone, it just goes quiet sometimes."

"Darcy," Spot's quiet voice said from the stairs. He leaned heavily against the wall, looking more tired than Darcy. His eyes glowed from his face eerily in contrast to the dark circles underneath them. Darcy had relented in her ban on his clothing and gave him a long john shirt, but still, he had only linen shorts and an undershirt on. It was strange to see, Spot Conlon looking so vulnerable.

For Scatter, it was a kick in the gut, since one of the last times he saw the kid before the preparations for his collection started he looked much the same, standing next to Kisser's bunk, crying because she wasn't there to comfort him. "Shit, kid. You look terrible."

Spot stared into Scat's flushed face, searching, but for what Scat was too drunk to know. "Yeah, well, your little friends keep coming over to play." He looked back to Darcy and nodded, letting her know wordlessly that it was ok. "This place got a back door?"

She nodded, "In the kitchen."

"Mick ever use it?" She shook her head, looking like a bird trapped in a house. Her normally dull green eyes were frantic and bright and her hands shook and fluttered.

"Good. You keep an eye out the front. If he comes, I'll shove dipshit here out the back. It'll be ok." She nodded stiffly, leaving Scat to wonder what magic Spot held over the women in his life. Marta fell in love with him instantaneously, though with Marta that was just how she was. It was like people had marquis lights above their heads that only she could see that labeled them good or bad from the moment she met them. But Darcy was rarely civil, seldom subdued, and didn't really like anyone. To see her compliant and very nearly companionable with another human being made Scat wonder if he'd had more to drink than he remembered. Spot led the way to the kitchen, never taking his hand off the wall as he walked. He unbolted the kitchen door and turned to Scat, leaning against the doorframe. "What's so important?" he demanded, but it didn't hold nearly the power it would have a week before.

"There's things you need to know, you need to understand before you go into this. Things about me, and about Kiss. She never wanted either of us involved in this."

"I remember. She wanted to get train tickets, go pan for gold or some crazy shit like that in the Rockies, but you wouldn't let her." Scat flopped down into a wooden chair, cradling his head in his hands while Spot talked. "She was so wrapped up in you that she didn't know where you ended and she began."

"You was just some snot nosed brat hanging on to her for dear life. You didn't know what was going on. D'you know that she came here and tried to bargain for me like a racehorse? That she told them that I was useless without her?"

"You are useless without her," he snapped, annoyed and exhausted. He didn't want to be standing there. His head was spinning and the new bruises on his face ached, but one question had been burning in the back of his brain for nearly a decade and he couldn't pass up this chance to know the answer. "Why'd you leave her the key?"

Scat wasn't prepared, he crossed his arms over his chest, broadened his shoulders and set his jaw. Spot watched him, taking in each string of muscle tighten, each flick of green eyes as if he was moving in slow motion. He noticed and catalogued in his mind every vein that popped out on Scat's arm or neck and every twitch of his lips. Scat was defensive, Spot found a nerve. "Because its what she wanted."

"Bullshit," he barked, then gripped his aching head with one hand and the doorknob with the other as his balance faltered. "She never wanted anything but you."

"She knew what was going on, and she knew that she could keep me even if I joined. She chose her own pride over me," Scat growled. "She wanted to show me up and put me in my place! What kind of a woman barges into a tavern full of thugs and tells them that they need her? Huh? She made me look like an idiot!"

"You are and idiot. She knew that already and liked you anyway. Lucky for her, the boys liked her and respected her. No one soaked her or took the key. She was just as good alone as you two was together, but scarier, 'cause you wasn't there grinning like the village idiot. The reputation that she built served Brooklyn well. "

"That wasn't respect kid. There's no honor in beating a girl in a fight." They faced off silently for a moment before Ted scoffed and looked away. He began to pick at a chip in the veneer on the table. "She wanted to lead, so I gave it to her and let her see what it was really like. I figured she would get fed up with it and step down after a few weeks."

"Try two years." Spot smirked at the surprise on Scatter's face. "But she still didn't want it; she wanted you."

Scat paused, tipping his chair back on two legs, trying to balance it there. "What's her story? What did she tell you happened?"

Spot sighed, and rubbed his forehead, wincing as he got too near the split in his eyebrow that Darcy had stitched back together. "Nothing. She never told me a damn thing. I knew where you went, I just didn't know you came willingly until now. I didn't put together that she was here until I was here with Darcy."

"Put together nothing! I told you!" Darcy interrupted from the doorway. She had a mug of coffee that he abandoned when he followed her downstairs in her hand. "Thought you might want to finish that."

"Get back out there and watch the damn door!" he snapped, snatching the mug from her hand. He stopped and blushed for a split second before he blanked his face again. "But, ya know, thanks," he mumbled.

She smiled and Scat snickered as he again tried to balance the chair on it's back legs. She walked past and kicked the chair, sending him and the chair to the floor with a loud crash before retreating to the parlor, giggling to herself. Scat pulled himself and the chair slowly off the floor with a groan. "Careful there. She's private property of Donovan Mickelson, and he don't share too well unless he feels like it."

The kid balked as Ted turned the chair around backwards and straddled the seat, resting his head on the backs of his hands at the top of the high wooden back. "She's been nice to me and I. . .I'm trying not to be so. . ."

"You?"

He smiled, an honest-to-God smile. "Yeah, not so 'me' to her. Marta would be _so_ proud."

"She really goes by Marta now?"

"It's her name, ain't it? You didn't expect her to still be going by Kisser, did you, _Ted?"_ He rolled his eyes, wondering how the drunk in front of him was ever considered competent enough to run anything _. "_ She didn't want to show you up. She wanted you to not have to go at all."

"I thought she didn't tell you nothing."

"She didn't, but I been around her every day for almost my whole life. I know her, Scat. I know everything there is to know about that crazy, scary, fucked up broad! Everything except what happened when she came here. But I know she didn't do it to show you up. Don't you remember what she said that morning?"

Scat groaned and rubbed his eyes, "She said lots of things. Shutting up ain't exactly one of her strong suits."

Spot's steel trap mind went to work recalling minute details that he had no business remembering after so many years. "You was arguing, and you said you had a reputation and a girl and you was going to protect what you had. And she said she had to protect what she had too."

Scat stared at the kid blearily, his brain having a hard time going back so far to memories he'd carefully tucked away where they wouldn't hurt so much. "You really did listen to everything we said, even when we told you not to, didn't you?"

For the first time that day, some light came back to Spot's eyes and he looked alive again, instead of like a fatigued and frail shadow of himself. "She gave me a job and I was good at it. The only time you got the slip on me was the meetings at the Convent. I didn't know about those."

"You were good at it and you cared about her." Scat grinned, full and wide and warming all the way to his eyes.

"I cared about you too," Spot said in a voice barely above a whisper, his eyes glued to the tiles on the floor. "You were the first guy, well man, who didn't hurt me that I ever met. I wanted to trust you like I did her, but you went and started lying to her and hiding things. And I couldn't do it."

Scat's grin fell and he rubbed the back of his neck. He had no response for that, so he went on with what he was saying before. "She tell you why that place was ours?" Spot shook his head even though Marta did tell him. He curled his hand more tightly around the mug, wishing it was hot. "Its where we met when she snuck out. I waited by that tree for as long as I could nearly every night. When she needed to run, she'd open the dormitory window and yell out at me, and I'd wait until the lights went out. She climbed the tree and I helped her down the other side of the fence." He looked at Spot, his eyes steady and controlled for the first time that day. He was sobering up, memory by memory. "There's a loose brick on the outside of the fence, in the base that the iron is seated in, and we used to leave each other stuff there. I kept doing it after I left, and it's all still there. Can you tell her its there? She needs to know that I tried to talk to her."

Spot looked away, "You know as well as me the I might not make it back there."

"If anyone can do it, you can, Kid. You was pretty impressive last summer at The World strike. Falling down from the rooftops and all."

The compliment and any questions Spot had were silenced as a knock on the front door froze them in place. "Get going," Spot whispered.

"You be careful, kid. Tell Kiss about the brick if you get back to Poplar."

Spot satin his palm and held it out, "You do it if I don't." Scat quickly returned the spit shake, flashing a fleeting Jack-o-lantern grin before running out into the alley. Spot casually grabbed his mug before putting his hand back on the wall and tottering back to check on Darcy.

Niko stood in the front hall glaring back at Spot who set the mug down on a secretarial that was open. He was only a few years older than Scat, but dark, swarthy and squat. Seeing him put into perspective the feeling that Spot got hit by a train, compared to Spot's lean, lanky frame, Niko was built like a train. He took in the sight of Niko's new injuries and smirked, knowing those blows were dealt in punishment for what happened to him. "Mick sent me for you to wrap my ribs," he grumbled at Darcy.

"You get your ass right on outta here, Niko Komopolis! You know as well as I do that Mick didn't send you!" Spot stepped forward placing a hand on her elbow from behind. Their eyes met and hers widened with comprehension. Scat needed more time. Spot rolled his eyes back into his head and let his legs go limp. Darcy dropped with him, letting out a small yelp, but kept his head from getting anymore knocked than it already was. "Niko!" she squeaked, "help me get him up!"

"Aw, Darce, my ribs are broken, I can't lift no one!"

"Your ribs ain't broke you big baby, they's just bruised. Now quit your bellyaching and help me!"

There was a soft click as the front door was closed gently. "Enough theatrics, Spot," Mick said, entering silently. "Niko, get outside. I need your help with Painten and I don't want to hear god damned word about your ribs." Darcy whimpered at the sound of Scat's last name, gripping Spot's shoulder tighter. Mick's razor sharp gaze went to her, "I'll deal with you later tonight."

When they were gone, Darcy began to breathe heavily and then to sob. "They're gonna kill him. Mick warned him. He's a dead man." Spot sat with her in silence on the floor while she cried, staring at the secretarial where his mug was still sitting, abandoned again.

He tentatively wrapped his arms around her shoulders. "Darcy, is there paper and pens in there?" She followed his gesture with her watery eyes and nodded, sniffling. "If I write a letter to someone, can you take it? Will you be safe?"

"They'll be at the Fox, in the basement for hours. They'll toy with him for a bit first." She looked sick, and got worse the longer her let her think about it.

He stood and scrawled a note out on fancy paper with a pen that cost more than he earned in a year. And fanned it in there air so the ink would dry. "You go to cannery row, there will be a guy there, kinda big, black hair. He'll be selling papes and playing a harmonica. You give this to him. If he ain't there you take it to Poplar St Lodging House and ask for Trout. Don't give it to no one else." He paused and thought for a moment. "If he's not either place you can give it to Marta, but tell her not to open it. She can't get the news that way. She'll blow everything."

XxXxXxX

 _A/N: If you want to see visualizations of Scat and Marta look up Sidney Crosby for Scat, he's a hockey player on the Pittsburg Penguins, he has a very similar face to what I saw in my mind when I dreamed up Scat and even has the Jack-o-lantern grin! For Marta, Khrystyne Haje (seriously people, don't do that kind of stuff to your kid's names, its not unique, it's painful) has the hair and the regal face…she also looks like she would be scary if she got pissed at you, lol. The picture that shows her at her most "Marta" is on imdb and she's wearing a green long sleeve shirt._ _I'm sorry that I'm just showing Scat to you as I kill him._

 ** _livelearnlovesing_** _: I told you I couldn't make any guarantees!_

 _As always, thanks to my two faithful reviewers, you two keep me going! I hope that the rest of you who are reading without reviewing are enjoying the story….but I don't know if you don't tell me! I'm really sorry for the shameless review grubbing,_ ** _but seriously, if you like it, put a review on it!_** _That goes for all stories, not just mine! There are so many abandoned stories on this sight that might still be in progress if the authors knew that people enjoyed them! Whoa, runaway authors note. Glad I started doing these things at the end or you guys would get bored of my rambling before ever getting to the story!_


	15. Chapter 15

She stood outside the unassuming little tavern, staring at it like the building itself was her enemy. Arms crossed over her chest, hip stuck out to one side, she waited , watching for any sign of movement from inside. She'd taken the time that morning to wet down and oil her curls before braiding them, and the smell of violet and sandalwood wafted out as the sun warmed her as she stood in her best clothes. Her papers sat beside her boot in a neat pile while she watched, at first only selling to those who came to her, lost in her thoughts as she was. She wondered if she could stand to spend all of her free time in the hovel in front of her. Could she and Scat really be happy in this life? At that moment she couldn't see how they could have any future at all if he was going to hide decisions that would change everything from her but the thought of a future without him made her sick.

As the city woke up and more and more people began to move around the streets, she had to pick up her papers and actually sell them, but it was easy pickings. The neighborhood made quick work of her stack of papers leaving her time to stand, leaning against the corner of a building, staring across the square at The Fox's Lair until a boyish but deep voice growled, "Pape please," as a huge, square hand held a penny out to her. She ignored him, pretending he wasn't talking to her since she quite obviously had no papers to sell to him.

"Sorry Mister," she said without looking his way, "sold me last a while ago." The proper speech that was drilled into her at school always caught the attention of boys like him just then she was in no mood to deal with being flirted with by some cocky street boy.

"Then youse best be moving along. There ain't nothing for a sweet young thing like you in there." His gruff voice, still pitchy with youth went from flirtatious to unpleasant and moody in an instant.

She raised her well-arched, tawny eyebrows, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye. "Its a free country, I can stand here if I like." His body was squat, stocky and square, just like the rough hand that he handed her the penny with. He looked at her with eyes so dark they were nearly as black as the hair that peaked out from under his oversized bowler hat.

"Move along before someone thinks youse casing the joint."

For the first time, she looked him full in the face, and smiled up through her eyelashes, soft and seductive. "You gonna call the bulls on lil ol' me?" she teased.

He laughed and her stomach and all her bravado dropped. "You seen any bulls since you been here? You been here all damn day, you seen a single copper in all that time?" He leered at her discomfort. "They know better than to come 'round here. You shoulda known better too." He grabbed her, his square hand wrapping around her bicep and digging into the meager flesh there.

"You're doing me a favor. Take me on inside, Dollface," she smirked, "I'd like an audience with your boss." She swaggered in beside him, swallowing the yelp pressing its way up her throat as his thick fingers pressed toward her arm bone.

The room was dim and the gas lights did little to chase away the gloom. Men lounged and drank everywhere even though Kisser hadn't seen a single person go in or out all day. A haze of thick, sweet cigar and pipe smoke hung over the tables and the vapor of cheap whiskey in the air was so potent that it made her throat tickle and her eyes water. The same brown, sweaty boy smell that she tried to ignore in the bunk room every evening was also there, but it was different, thicker and more bitter. Niko kept his hand firmly on her upper arm as he led her between the clunky tables and chairs and to the middle of the room. She held her head high, looking down her nose at the room full of crooks and thugs.

On a small stage at the back of the room, half a dozen girls in ochre yellow corsets made of silk trimmed with black lace at every edge, jet buttons in the front and black satin ribbons lacing them in the back over scarlet knee length pettiskirts, lush and full with draping and layers danced. Their rouge stained faces and coal rimmed eyes looked dead behind the smiles they plastered on as they pranced in unison, kicking their heels back behind them and then their toes up in front and shaking their precariously contained bosoms at the drooling men at the tables. An old man played rinky dink piano music at one side of the stage for them to dance to, mopping his face with a handkerchief from time to time.

"What have you got there, Niko?" A deep, smooth, almost charming voice cut through the room, stopping all of the other low rumbling voices mid sentence. The place went silent and all eyes went either to the leader, lounging in an arm chair in front of the great stone fireplace or to her and Niko in the center of the room. Her breath caught in her throat as she took him in. He was a beautiful man, with his dark hair and deep skin, but his eyes were a startling, light blue that had no business glowing out of his dark complexion. He was older, somewhere above thirty five, but there was and undeniable appeal to his face. The air of unapologetic arrogance and class that held him above every other man she ever met intrigued her a bit.

"Found her outside, selling her papers, staring at the place like she was up to something," Niko answered with a smirk in his voice. He leaned down, his breath hot on her ear, "She's a beauty, ain't she Mick?" She squirmed away from the heat, ducking her ear to her shoulder. "Got a mouth on her, though. Demanded to see my boss."

The man in the chair smiled, steepling the thick fingers of his wide hands and giving Niko a nod to bring her closer. "And what would the boss want with a sickly looking, mouthy, little street urchin like her?" The man propped his feet up on a footstool and watched her, his eyebrows raised in amused curiosity. His dark hair was touched with silver at the temples. His clothes were much like Niko's, store bought, clean, but nothing fancy. He barely glanced at her, carrying on like she was a statue or a mannequin in a dress shop and her anger flared. She found herself wanting his attention desperately.

"If you think I'm going to let this ugly troll speak for me, you've got another thing coming," she snapped, finally freeing herself from Niko's grasp. She turned quickly and punched her, first in the gut with her right hand, then in the teeth with her left. The satisfying "oof" he let out and the slice of pain as his teeth cut her knuckles sent a rush of air to parts of her brain that had gone dormant under the blanket or responsibility and worry. She was normally content to let Scat fight the fights, but she forgot how much she enjoyed it when she got the opportunity. The room burst into laughter. She stared Mick in the face, the smirk never wavering on her lips. She was in control of this situation and it was exhilarating. A whole room of adult men was hanging on her every word.

The boss smiled at her, and again it was almost charming, but this eyes gave her pause. Now that he finally was looking at her she wanted him to look away, to let her go. "You caught a live one there, Niko. Now what can I do for you, Miss…"

"My name is Kisser, and I'm the leader of the Brooklyn newsboys." She willed her hands and voice not to shake or stutter. "My partner, Scatter, and I share the responsibilities and make all decisions together. You can't have one of us without the other. I'm the brains, he's the brawn and the charisma, you'll find him a disappointment on his own." It killed her to say that, no matter how true it was or how mad at him she was. He wasn't a disappointment to her, he made sense in her life, but on his own, in this world of fights and threats, debts and under the table deals, he would be nothing but a lackey. "The kids of Brooklyn thrive because of me, and because I have him to back me up."

"I hear a proposal coming on," the man teased, "do please get on with it."

She smiled, sweet as sugar laced with arsenic, "I'm sorry, sir, I don't talk business out in the open nor with people who don't have the manners to introduce themselves."

"Mickelson. Donovan Mickelson." He stood and bowed low to her, it was an act meant to patronize, but that ended up giving her a reputation that saved her life more than once. "If your Majesty will follow me, I'll find someplace more intimate in which to entertain the Queen of Brooklyn herself."

She lifted one arched brow looking sour and displeased as he stood. "A firm handshake goes much farther with me than mocking," she advised holding her hand out. He smiled the same sly smile and took her hand and brought it to his lips. "I see we're not going to work past this issue of my being a girl so easily," she grumbled. "Lead on, Mr. Mickelson. I'd like to get this over with, the whole rest of my life depends on it."

He led her up a set of back stairs to a dark hallway full of doors. By smell alone, she knew what the room he took her to was used for, the lingering whiffs of human musk and cheap perfume spoke volumes as to what the sparse furnishings and bare mattress were regularly used for. He flopped down on the bed, letting the springs bounce him as his fingers laced leisurely behind his head. "Here we are Miss Gatcyk." Her eyes flew wide and he smirked at her surprise. "Yes, I know who you are, I knew who you were the moment Niko dragged you in, otherwise I would have let him drag you up here on his own, and I promise you," his voice dropped to a sinister whisper, "he wouldn't have been so polite. Now, you have your privacy, you have my name and my attention, so what can I do for your highness?"

She sneered, crossing her arms over her chest like the boys did when they wanted to appear bigger and more intimidating, forcing her shoulders to look more square and wide than they did. "I want my life back the way it was before you and your goons entered it. I want those ingrates downstairs to keep their hands off of Scatter and for you to never threaten my younger boys again."

"What's so precious about the life you had two weeks ago? A dime a day, a smelly bunk house, stolen kisses outside a convent and a brat hanging off your pocket…are they really worth sacrificing yourself?" He grinned, rising from the bed as her eyes blazed and her chest began to heave with anger. He was good and he knew too much about her. She wasn't used to anyone having the boost on her when it came to information. She prided herself on knowing everything that went on in her streets, but she didn't know as much as he did. "That's right, I have 'little birdies' too, and I pay mine so they tend to get what I ask them for."

"Family," she growled, her body rigid and unwavering from the aggressive boy stance. She was afraid that any movement would betray her weaknesses to him since he already knew too much for her taste. "The first one I've ever had, and freedom, Mr. Mickelson, neither of which am I willing to give up without a fight."

"So what do you propose, your Highness? State your terms and we'll see if we can't come to some kind of an agreement." He stood from the bed and leaned casually against the wall as if they were discussing the rules for a stickball game, not hashing out details that could change the course of her whole life. Then again, her life was a just a game to him, and she was just a toy.

"I want the same deal the boys get when you haul them in off the streets against their will," she answered simply not allowing her face to betray her annoyance at his continued teasing and mockery. She wasn't the a queen anymore than Scat was a king and she knew that if the tables were turned and Scat was standing in her shoes now, Mick would not be teasing him in the same way. "I want what I earned as the leader of Brooklyn, the option to join or fight my way out. I won't be pushed to the side because I'm just a girl."

"Given that choice would you join or fight?" He quirked an eyebrow and she cursed herself for the stirring of desire in her gut. Why was he affecting her like that?

She smiled, that poison laced smile, "I think you already know the answer to that."

He nodded, curt and disappointed, but covered it quickly. "So if you win, you want freedom from us for both you and your little boyfriend. But what if you lose? What makes this little deal of yours worth my while?"

"The way I understood the terms for the boys, if I lose, I'm dead," she replied, confused by the question.

"Yes, but you're asking me for a favor and in return, I expect a few concessions."

She shrugged, "I have named my terms, Mr. Mickelson. Name yours."

"If you win, your freedom and Ted Painten's will be granted, my boys will not bother you again, but the rules for your challenge will be different than they are for the boys because you, my dear, are different." She rolled her eyes and he chuckled darkly, running a rough finger down her cheek. "It's not every day that someone barges in here demanding an audience and a gauntlet from me, and I want to make sure everyone involved learns a valuable lesson from this experience." He paused again, checking her face for a reaction, but she remained blank, listening intently. His voice held the same bemused, patronizing lilt that grew to a menacing growl as he continued. "The boys won't be out for blood, just for you to _beg_ them to stop. They will be allowed to use any means necessary to make you plead for mercy. Any cry for help will be deemed as failure on your part. Just like for the boys, they will queue up to challenge you, and if you make it through all of them, your final challenge is to take on me before you see daylight again."

"And if I fail?" Her voice was the low whisper that commanded more attention from the boys than any yell because they listened to her words not just the volume of her voice.

"If you fail my collection of Scatter goes on as planned and you, my beauty," he paused, closing his eyes lustfully and all of the erotic energy that she felt radiating off of him, but didn't want to acknowledge was blatant, raw and out in the open. The lust was plain in his incongruent eyes that looked almost right in his face once they were darkened by his dilated pupils. "Oh, I have such plans for you. You will live with me as my personal companion." She grimaced, trying to contain her urge to retch theatrically. He chuckled in an unpleasant way and her heart stopped for a beat. "And if you try to run from me or if that darling mouth of yours gets tiresome, then I will dress you like my other dolls downstairs and you will dance and entertain the men until the light goes out in those fiery eyes of yours. And if you still feel the need to cause trouble, I'm sure I can find a nice opium den or brothel looking for a two bit whore that I can sell you to." He grinned, all the charm drained from his handsome face and with it all the air rushed from her lungs in a single breath as if she'd been sucker punched.

He prowled around her in circles as she considered, a bemused smirk quirking his at his well formed lips. She couldn't ignore the fact that, even as he was threatening to sell her to a brothel, she was attracted to him. But as she watched him leer at her she remembered why she came, why she was in his presence in the first place and Scat's wide wonderful grin, beautiful despite or maybe even because of the gap left by the tooth she knocked out filled her mind's eye. She couldn't even remember what he did that made her angry enough to strike him anymore. The warmth of his soft, tanned skin filled her and the smell of his clothes and his hair sparked that feeling of life in the pit of her stomach. No matter how the man in the prostitute's room intrigued her and beguiled her, he would never make her feel full and right the way Scatter could without ever touching her. If the looks on the faces of those girls on the stage meant anything, his attention would bring nothing but emptiness. Her short life had already seen enough sad, empty days.

Scat said that if he came quietly they could still be together, things wouldn't have to change. If she took Mick's deal and lost, she would have to see Scat every day, but she wouldn't be able to to touch him or kiss him. Her hands would never be allowed to tangle themselves in that unruly mass of of chocolate brown hair. The way Mick looked at her, the way no one downstairs in the tavern dared to speak once he raised his voice a fraction of a decibel told her he wouldn't share her, especially not with the likes of Scatter. "Time to make a choice, Majesty," he said, his teasing but seductive voice pushing her anger to the limits of her control. "Are you going to run home and pretend this little meeting never happened, or are you going to accept my challenge? If you leave now, you"ll probably be home in time for supper. If you stay, we can have you patched up and ready for business by tomorrow night."

She looked up at him, meeting his eyes that were the same color as Spot's, but held more cruelty than she could ever imagine existing in the little boy and, but something else too, over confidence and that pulled the corner of her lip upward as hope filled her. She was always at her best when the odds were at their worst. "You're so sure I'll lose," she mused. She already knew what she would do, and knew that he did as well.

"Does that mean we have a deal?"

"Scatter goes free and the little boys are left alone?" she asked, repeating the terms before agreeing to them.

"Along with your own freedom," he agreed, but raised a finger, "providing that you win, of course."

"Of course," she agreed.

"If you do not win, you are mine and Scatter is collected as planned. He'll get here just in time to see you make your debut." His grin was cruel, but still beautiful. His teeth straight and white, his eyes crinkling debonairly at the corners.

Her palms were drenched as she rubbed them together, going over the terms again and again in her head. Finally, she wiped her right hand off on her skirt and held it out to him, "Deal."

He shook her hand firmly, the shake he refused to give her downstairs in front of the men, and strode out of the room without another word to her. She took a deep, shuddering breath before trailing behind him back down to the hushed but still busy room below. The piano man was no where to be seen and the girls were dispersed throughout the crowd as the two reached the bottom step. "Boys!" he greeted loudly, drawing their attention back to him. "We have ourselves an unexpected challenger! Lock the doors." Hands ensnared her arms and steered her to a cellar while her head swam with panic and remorse. At that moment she knew that she would never again be the girl that she was when she left the lodging house, pissed as hell at Scatter. Those days were over, and darker days were ahead.

 _A/N: If you are a person who is sensitive and affected by violence, abuse and sexual assault, then you should skip the next chapter. You already know from all the previous chapters that Marta won her freedom, the next chapter details how, and its grim. It kept me up at night while I was writing it. So please, don't shoot the writer, just skip chapter 17 if those are things you cannot handle._


	16. Chapter 16

_Disclaimer: This chapter gets a bit more graphic than my norm, nothing truly explicit, but definitely more graphic. If you are sensitive to violence and sexual and physical abuse, then please be advised that you should skip this chapter. I tried to keep it well within the T rating…but just in case. You already know that Marta won her freedom, if you can't handle how, then just wait for chapter 18._

It was only an hour after Mick made the announcement that the saloon was closing and the party was moving to the cellar that the show, the worst night of Kisser Gatcyk's young life, started in earnest. It was like an indoor fair in that dank basement, the room was full of people yelling, placing bets on the different rounds while Mick bellowed like a carnival barker trying to entice more boys to agree to fight. The dancing girls had been led in to sit in a row on crates. Mick wanted to make sure they had front row seats of see what happened to girls who didn't know their place in his company. For the first time in her life, the people brushing, bumping and jostling her irritated her rather than bolstering her confidence.

Niko was first in line to take her, dancing around on his toes and barking, "Me, me, Mick! Lemme take the first crack at her!" like an over-excited terrier. She rolled her eyes as she unbuttoned and removed her nice blouse, regretting her decision to look her best for this confrontation that morning. She wished she had on pants, but was thankful that she wore long johns underneath her clothes instead of just a chemise. She shoved the knit sleeves of her pink undershirt up above her elbows and pulled the hem of her skirt up between her legs to tuck into her waistband like she hadn't done since her last escape from Most Holy Trinity. Just like then, she couldn't afford to be tripping on and getting tangled up in the fabric.

The swarthy kid was ready, fired up and pissed off from the punches she snuck in on him in the tavern above. His lip was still swollen and split, but the real damage was to his pride. She shook out her left hand that was cut and sore from his teeth as she stepped into the center of the room where he waited. Her slender fingers bent and flexed while he hopped around like a man possessed. She made no other move, than the opening and closing of her fists and the slow turning of her body to keep her eyes on him. He threw a few false punches, trying to scare her but she didn't flinch. She moved her body calmly and smoothly out of the way of his fists. She blocked, ducked and darted out of the way while he swung wildly, getting frustrated at his failure to take a girl down quickly. He was an idiot, she realized, an idiot that Scatter would have had knocked out cold within moments.

Her arms were aching from blocking his fists, so when she saw the opportunity to trip him and use his body against him, she took it, hooking one foot around his ankle as he charged and then kicking him right in the ass just to make sure he went down. He barely got himself up onto his knees before she had both hands dug into his black hair, gripping tightly, and smashed her knee into his face. She threw him down with all her might, kneeling heavily with one shin on his Adam's apple and the opposite boot heel digging into his fingers. He let out a small, strangled moan that might have been a scream if he had full use of his windpipe and squeezed his beady black eyes shut for a moment before glaring up at her. She held him there, pinned to the floor, glaring back wordlessly for a long time and the room stayed uncomfortably silent as they all waited for the stand off to end. "Are. You. Done?" she asked, her voice low, quiet and overly annunciated. His face went from tan to red before verging on a terrifying shade of purple. "Tell me you're done and I'll let you up." He dug the fingers of his free hand into her calf, just as he did to her arm earlier while the small amount of air he could get in or out came in tiny, weak grunts. "I will let you die if you make me." His grip began to falter as his body started to shut down without air and she begged him with her eyes to tap out of the fight. She didn't want a death on her conscience, but she wouldn't risk her own life either.

Finally, she let a relieved breath out as he tapped her leg just as his eyes began to look bugged out and bloodshot. She stood swiftly and moved away from him, the carnival atmosphere gone from the nearly silent room. No one expected her to make it this far. No one was paying attention to Niko, they just left him lying there on the floor. Kisser was still and staring at nothing, praying to a deity that she didn't trust to let her get back home so that the mean, surly looks didn't become the only looks Spot had. He had so much potential, so much to give, she couldn't be the reason he fully shut down as a human being. Her mind wandered over to Scat, the real reason she was there. "I'm so sorry, Scat," she whispered to the tiny square of dark sky. She wondered if the boys were worried about her yet, it wouldn't have been the first time she skipped supper because she didn't think she could sit in a room with all of them without punching someone. They wouldn't really start to worry until Noakes called up for lights out when she wasn't sulking in her bed with her back to them. Spot would notice, she knew, but wouldn't say anything unless he woke up in the night. Poor kid, he was going to be alone with his demons.

The heavy footsteps behind her were hard to distinguish amid the din of the rest of the gang mingling. She heard the footfalls too late to move away when Niko's arm wrapped across her throat, pressing her back to his front in a suggestive way while his other hand went to the soft curve of her hipbone. She let out a clipped gasp, her hands clawing at his forearm, trying to remove it. She struggled for air as he whispered in her ear, his voice tight and harsh from the swelling left by her leg. "How do you like it, huh?" he growled, breathing hot and too close to her ear again. "Someone else in charge of how much air you breathe? You bitch. I shoulda taken care of you first thing this morning like I wanted to." The hand on her hip scooped under her top and up towards her breast. He grabbed, squeezing the soft tissue too tightly as he drew her earlobe into his mouth. She squeaked in protest. "You shoulda been mine," he grunted.

She felt the sharp point of the blade under her ear as it was held firmly under Niko's bulging Adam's apple. "Nothing here is yours, _boy,_ " Mick's suave but now slightly unhinged voice warned. Distracted by the lack of air in her lungs, she didn't notice how the room went silent around them. They were all watching, all afraid to breathe as they waited to see how Mick would handle the situation. Niko's arm tightened around her forcing another small squeak out as the blade pressed harder into his throat. She didn't dare look at anyone. She blanked her eyes, staring intently at one of the small, high windows on the cellar wall. Dusk had come, the light was soft and grey and she could see the boots of the people rushing by on the street above. When his grip went lax at last, she dropped at his feet.

An older man, older so much as Mick was older, dragged her over to the makeshift bench where the dancing girls sat. "Take care of her," he ordered gruffly and pushed his way back through the throngs of men to whatever what was happening in the center of the room. The backs of the men blocked their view, but Kisser didn't care. Between Niko's screams and pitiful apologies and the hard packing sounds of expertly thrown punches, she didn't want to see.

One of the girls nudged her shoulder and held a glass with a nip of whiskey in it in front of her face. "Drink it, Sweetie," she said, her raspy, harsh voice sounding soothing and kind. "It'll help settle your nerves." She stared at the glass blankly, afraid to raise her eyes to anyone else, afraid that eye contact could be interpreted as her asking for help and blowing the messy deal she made. "It's ok," the soothing voice assured, "its just whiskey. You ain't gotta be afraid of none of us. Take the glass." She did as she was told, slugging back the burning shot and grimacing as it slid down her throat. "You did good out there. Mick and Rudy were impressed, though they would have been more impressed if you had the balls to just kill Niko."

"I'm not a killer," she croaked, rolling the glass between her palms absently. Her confidence in her ability to come out the other side of their was wavering as she realized how tired one fight left her. The pauses in between would be what took her down, the opportunity for her body to realize how fatigued it was. "Who's Rudy?"

"Mick's right hand man, the guy who brought you over to us." Kisser dragged her eyes up to meet the soft brown ones of the girl. She wasn't much older than Kiss herself, but the look in her eye was ages older. "Rudy's a stand up guy, about the only one of them in this room. He's the calm and reason to all of Mick's…" she waved her hands around as her eyes turned upward, "whatever it is that makes him tick."

"Insanity and erotic prowess straight out of a penny dreadful?" Her voice came out without her knowledge, she didn't even recognize it as her own when the sound hit her ears. The girls all snickered and tried to hide it behind their hands. The girl who spoke introduced herself as Clarice and kept up a calming stream of conversation while the men watched Mick beat the hell out of Niko in stunned silence. Kiss couldn't see anything, but what she could hear told her a lot. Mick had lost his mind over Niko touching something he deemed to be his property. The force and frequency of the blows along with the muttered curses showed his passion, crazy, obsessive passion. She stored that thought away incase she needed it.

As Mick ran out of steam, Rudy stepped in to haul his boss away to calm down while some of the other men picked Niko up off the floor and carried him away to get patched up. Clarice looked at her, the moment of peace was over. "Look, we can't cheer you on out loud or nothing, but know that wese rooting for you, huh? No one but Mick wants to see you stuck here and if there was anything we could do, we'd do it."

"But you can't," Kisser sighed. "I agreed to do this with no help. It's my fight that I got myself into and I have to get myself out. I'm the Queen of Brooklyn, after all." With her face angled down to the dirt floor and the low light, Clarice didn't see the roll of her eyes that punctuated the statement.

"Yeah, well, all these assholes fancy themselves kings by association to Mick. I figure it'll take a queen to knock 'em all down a few pegs. Never forget, that it may be a man's world, but a smart woman can turn a man's head any way she wants and make him think it's his idea. Far as I can tell, you're pretty good at that on your own turf, otherwise Mick woulda been after you from the start. Now you just gotta figure how you can use it to your advantage with these bums." She stared at the girl, incredulous that such wisdom could come from such an unlikely place.

She was ready when Rudy came to retrieve her. Shook up, sore, tired, but mentally ready to do it again as many times as she had to. She fought four more, but after the scene between Mick and Niko, the men were hesitant and tentative. None of the men seemed to be able to anticipate where the leader's head was, whether hurting her would be applauded or get them pounced on. Their distraction allowed her to win the fights easily, which only made Mick look more irate and unhinged.

Rudy stood to take his turn and everything about him as he stepped up, rolling his sleeves to his elbows, looked hesitant, regretful and unenthusiastic. He was the same general age as Mick, but with soft grey-green eyes and sandy hair. He stood stock still as he stared at her. "You should have gone home when he gave you the out," he mumbled so as not to be heard by anyone but her. "Your boy would have done fine."

"You're probably right," she answered still panting and trembling a bit. "But, I've never been known for making smart decisions where he's concerned."

"I'll go easy on you," he murmured as they began to circle, "I don't want to hurt you and I don't want you stuck here." Part of her raged at the insinuation that she needed him to help her win, but the small part of her that had more common sense than pride was grateful. Even if they didn't outnumber her seven to one, these men were all experienced fighters with weight, muscle and height on her. She needed any advantage they were willing to give her.

"You'll get us both killed saying things like that," she hissed in a whisper, careful to keep her eyes away from Mick.

"But I couldn't live with myself if I didn't," he answered, his eyes also never leaving her face or straying towards Mick. "I've got four little girls at home; I'm not about to let anyone else's little girl get sucked into what this life does to a person."

As she gave a nearly imperceptible nod of thanks, Mick got impatient. "Enough foreplay you two!" he yelled out, his voice still rough and dangerous as his mind refused to come down from his outburst at Niko. "Get on with it! Make a move, Rudy!" Rudy swung on command, grazing her cheekbone as she jumped back.

She grinned and cried out arrogantly, "Come on, old man, is that all you got?" She threw a right hook that caught him weakly on the jaw below his ear and a jab to the gut. He was true to his word and fought hard enough that Mick didn't suspect but made some purposeful mistakes. As the end approached, he left her an opening to knock him down and she took it. He caught himself on his hands and one knee, the other stretched out behind him. She took one look at him and acted without thought, care or consideration. Her foot kicked out slamming into the side of his knee and he went down like a sack of bricks, cursing a blue streak. He glared at her through tears of pain and she stared back in horror. She won, she won fair and square under the terms she and Mick agreed on, but it felt like a loss, a betrayal of who she was. He helped her and and she hurt him, possibly crippled him. His glare softened as her struggle played out plainly on her face and he nodded to her.

"Well played, Miss Kisser," he grunted. " That was a good fight, a victory earned fairly." She shook her head as she bit her cheeks to keep from sobbing. This wasn't how victory felt. Mick was winning, changing her. Even if she made it out of the building, she was never going to be herself again; he was always going to make sure that he won in some way. That's what the gauntlet was really about, making sure that he won, no matter what.

Again, she got a small break between fights and again she wished that the next fighter would just jump in instead of waiting. The waiting was torturous for both her mind and her body. It was only when Mick stood and entered towards her, his vest off, his shirt, still splattered with Niko's blood, opened a bit with the sleeves rolled to his elbows that she wanted the rest to last, wanted another drink from the girls and wanted to not have made it this far. In all of the commotion of the previous rounds she forgot he was the final barrier between her and freedom. His eerie eyes glowed out of his golden face. "You look tired, my beauty," he teased.

"I assure you," she gritted out between clenched teeth, "I'm fine. There's light at the end of the tunnel now. I'm almost there."

"Such spirit," he chuckled patronizingly. "I'm truly going to enjoy breaking you."

She grinned, touching the end of her braid as it fell messy and untied over her shoulder, remembering the last person who tried to break her, who cut off her crowning glory in that effort. "I just don't break so easy, Mick." His sly, flirtatious smile faltered at her confidence. "People been trying since the day I was born, don't flatter yourself thinking that you'll succeed where so many others have failed."

Suddenly his hands were on her throat and she was powerless to pry them off. She never had the chance to throw a punch or even move away. His body moved fluidly and silently. He caressed her, kissing her violently, breathing heavily, all while keeping the vice grip on her throat with one of the hands that she couldn't stop staring at earlier in the day. "I will succeed, _Kisser,"_ with that he planted a fierce, heavy, hurtful kiss on her mouth and moved down to her collar bone, biting hard at the tendon there. Her mind screamed in rage all the things that were trapped in her throat. He easily forced her to the dirt floor and pinned down sitting on her pelvis and trapping her elbows under his knees. He ripped open the buttons of her undershirt and plunged his face into her cleavage. Hot tears filled her eyes as he bit into her flesh hard enough to bruise. She could feel the sickening hardness of him growing against her hipbone and momentarily wished she could just pass out already and get what seemed inevitable over with. He looked up from his ravaging and glared at Clarice and the other girls, those nightmarish eyes sending them a thousand silent warnings. Clarice looked at her sadly and the words the dancer spoke to her earlier sounded loudly in her head, echoing over the whine of oxygen deprivation that buzzed ominously in her ears. The gleam of inspiration plain on Kisser's face made Clarice frown, worrying about what sort of plan the poor girl could possibly come up with while she couldn't even draw a full breath. Kiss lifted her hand and wrapped it seductively around Mick's calf, caressing him through his pant leg. He groaned with pleasure as he went back to her décolletage and lifted his knee, allowing her to have one hand back. She teased him expertly, feather light touches drawing him to the brink of oblivion. While he panted and moaned she had a few seconds to sweep her eyes around her, taking inventory of what was within her reach. When he came down and started to get handsy again, she returned to teasing and touching him, sending him back into the fog of his own passion. She could never thank Niko enough for being such a sick sleaze. If Mick hadn't shown her how thoroughly he was wrapped up in the idea of her, she would never have had a chance. On the third try, she saw the whiskey bottle, still sitting next to Clarice's boot. She arched her back and grimaced as she slid her hand up his thigh towards the bulge that he kept grinding against her. He was a slave to passion, and passion he would get. As he panted and groaned, she stretched back seductively and felt her fingers brush the cool glass. His grip on her throat had slowly loosened until it was just tight enough to keep her held down and make her heart pound heavily under his hand. She let out a moan and felt his body shiver in response, letting her shift herself towards Clarice and the bottle.

At first she thought she imagined it. Clarice's boot swept across the dirt floor to cross over her other leg and tapped the bottle forward just the fraction of an inch that Kiss needed to be able to grab it. As engrossed in the things he was doing to her that she was happy to not think about, Mick didn't see her eyes flick up to meet with the dancer's and Clarice didn't look back, just tensed the corner of her mouth momentarily. The bottle was heavy in her hand, almost too heavy to lift after everything that happened. She brought it down over his head as hard as she could. She hit her mark, but was not prepared for the force at which he fell on top of her. As glass and whiskey rained down on them both, all of the air rushed from her lungs and all she could do was lie still and try to convince her body to draw new air in. She was pinned under him, she couldn't push him off, her body was still hurt from all the other men and shaking too hard from this one. The more she realized she was trapped, the more she began to panic. None of them were going to help her, the bastards. Even with him unconscious, they were too afraid to help her if it went against his wishes, and she couldn't ask for fear of losing what she already won.

As her lungs revived from the shock of his weight and started pulling in air again, she wedged her other arm out from under his knee and rolled his heavy body off of hers and dragged herself up off the floor. She looked down at him, expecting the burn of tears but nothing came. She was empty. Just like he wanted her. Her eyes slowly went to Rudy. Who sat sprawled across two chairs with his leg propped up and splinted. "Can you promise me it's over?" she asked, her voice a deep tenor from the strain and bruising on her throat.

"It's over. The terms you agreed on will be upheld and you're free to go," he agreed sounding as tired as she felt.

"And Scatter and Spot won't be harmed? Or any of the others?"

"You have my word." She stared at him a moment longer, searching his face. When she saw no trace of a lie, she nodded.

Clarice stood next to her and helped her put her blouse back on over her torn long john shirt before guiding her to the cellar steps and out into the silent darkness of the earliest hours of the morning. "All hail the queen," she whispered in Kisser's ear and slipped back inside, leaving Kisser shivering in the darkness.

 _A/N: Ugh, thank God thats over. Now we can move away from all that. Nothing else will be as violent or as horrible as that chapter. There will be more fights, even another death (I think. Sorry….I'm a character murderer) another gauntlet but nothing as graphic and as this chapter has been. Thanks for sticking with me!_


	17. Chapter 17

PopTrout stood at his normal selling spot, holding up the afternoon edition and playing a rousing tune that he heard at one of the vaudeville theaters on his harmonica when he locked eyes with the blonde girl across the square. She was a sad sight,  
tattered and dusty looking. He offered her a small smile and went back to playing, watching her out from underneath his eyelashes. Girls made him nervous. They always wanted him to talk and ran away when he didn't. She watched him for a bit, her cheeks  
pink with cold and her limp, flaxen hair pulling out of it's soft updo before charging over in such a decisive way that he found himself backing away from her. She was so tiny that even Race would look tall next to her, but the look on her face was  
so stony and strong that she might as well have been a two ton elephant escaped from the Central Park Zoo. "Wait," she called, as she saw his foot move back. "I'm looking for Trout, Spot sent me." She wouldn't have thought it possible moments before,  
but his eyes got even wider as he placed his palm on his chest and nodded. She narrowed her eyes, suspicious of his silent answer. "Prove it. Tell me something that only someone as close to him as he said you was would know." He made a grunt of frustration  
in his throat and began to dig in his coat pocket for something to write on. "I ain't got all day, Doll, and neither do you!"

Trout looked up at her, his thick brow furrowed, and then looked back at the ground. "T-talks. . .his s-s-s-leep," he mumbled.

It was a start. "What does he say every night, over and over." He sputtered and struggled to respond and she finally realized what was going on. Her voice and stance softened. "I'm sorry, he didn't tell me that you…weren't a big talker, he just told me  
what to look for: black hair and a harmonica."

The boy moved his mouth without sound, like he was chewing on the words a bit before letting them out. "L-l-l-l. . . " He sighed with frustration, rubbing the back of his neck and kicking at the cobblestones before trying again cursing Spot for sending  
this girl to him and not warning her to not expect him to talk, humiliating him. "L-l-lemme out."

She nodded with satisfaction and handed the folded sheet of linen over to him. "You take care of Kisser; he's worried."

"He. . .? " He was shook up and not in control of his mouth. He couldn't finish the simple question and went back to digging for a pencil in his coat pocket. _Hows he doing?_ he wrote and shoved the piece of paper at the blonde.

She scanned it quickly and sighed, handing it back to him. "He's ok, not great, but ok."

 _How long does he have?_

She shook her head, "I don't know. Mick don't tell me as much as I let the others thinks he does. Mick will want him to fit to run and fight before he puts him through the gauntlet." Trout questioned her with his face but she couldn't explain. She'd never  
actually had to witness a gauntlet. "You ask Kisser, she knows better than anyone. Read your letter and get going. You don't have much time." With that, she turned to hurry away and he unfolded the paper.

 _Trout,_

 _Get back to the house and stay with Marta, all night if you have to. There's bad things coming for her and I need to know that you'll get her through. She might lose her nerve and she might lose her cool and go crazy. You gotta make sure you can reel her back in. If I don't make it back I need you to go to the convent where she grew up and look for an apple tree, its just a stump now. In the bricks under the fence in front of the tree there's a loose brick and Scat hid stuff there for her. Scat wanted her to have what's hidden there and didn't get the chance to tell her. Take care of her, take care of you._

 _Spot_

Trout read and reread the letter, feeling like he might throw up. "In case I don't make it back." He was giving up. He crushed the thick, heavy paper in his palm and nearly threw it into the gutter, but thought better of it, figuring he might need it  
to help explain himself later. Other people's word's become precious to someone who doesn't have their own. He was so sick of being continually jerked around by the guy who claimed to be his best friend. Some best friend! Spot Conlon was barely capable  
of being a functioning human being let alone a friend to anyone! No one could even touch him beyond a hand shake or a clap on the shoulder without getting soaked. Even those two forms of acceptable contact got the person doing the touching a serious  
and threatening sideways glance so cold that it made the blood in a guy's veins freeze until all he could do was let go and back up a few steps while hoping to God above that he didn't get mauled. What kind of friend acted like that? What kind of  
friend walked into the lair of a gang willingly and left his friends to clean up the mess? Spot Conlon was a fucking asshole.

He started back towards the Lodging House, but swiftly turned, thinking he should tell Nips and show him the note from Spot, but he didn't end up either place. He found himself on the bridge staring out at Randall's Island again and he didn't really remember  
getting there. He was so goddamned tired. He hadn't really slept since this whole thing started. The only night he really slept since before Scat cornered Marta on her way back from the market and all of the Dockside bullshit began was the night he  
spent in Manhattan.

He suddenly wished desperately that he'd kept wandering as a seven year old, made it across the bridge, stayed anywhere but Brooklyn. He wished that he hadn't curled up in that alley to hide and rest and that Spot hadn't seen him and followed him in a  
rare moment of unabashed empathy. Spot did have those, those rare moments where he was kind and caring, more often than anyone, especially Spot himself, would admit. They were sneaky, private moments like he didn't want anyone knowing that he had  
feelings beyond "smirk" and "pissed as hell" with only blank faced and observing as an intermediate between the two.

Trout stood, gripping the railing and brooding out over the water, almost wishing he'd stuck around with the assholes he'd once called his family long enough to be carted over there across the water. His memories of the tenement in Queens were vague.  
He remembered being mad because no one understood him, getting teased by the other kids, he remembered hearing his parents talking about how they couldn't afford to feed him when he'd never be able to go to school or earn a wage. His mother cried  
that night, that last night. He remembered that. He was so lost in his thoughts that he didn't smell the cigar smoke or hear the happy greeting that was yelled out before Racetrack slapped him on the back. With a frightened yelp, his fist flew out,  
meeting solidly with Race's chin, throwing his head so far back that he fell over backwards onto the sidewalk. "What the fuck!" Race yelled, feeling his jaw, and sitting back up. His deep brown eyes shocked as he silently questioned his best friend.  
"Jesus Christ, Trout!"

Trout was breathing shallowly and erratically, his eyes wide with shock. An impish grin grew on Race's face as he rubbed his tender jaw, "Damn, you pack a fucking punch! Remind me not to piss you off anytime soon!" Trout looked away, blushing sheepishly  
and rubbing the back of his neck with his big paw, embarrassed at his over the top reaction to getting spooked. He reached down and pulled Race to his feet, making his _sorry_ sign over and over again with his other hand. Race clapped him on  
the shoulder and waved away his apologies, "Now that I know my jaw is still on my face, are you ok? It ain't like you to try to knock a guy's head off outta the blue! Here I was, coming over to check on my boys before I go to see a guy about a horse  
and my best friend near knocks my lights out!" The only answer Trout could manage was a forceful exhalation of air before returning to his place by the railing, staring out at the murky river.

"Come on," Race said, pulling his friend away from his brooding by his coat sleeve. "Walk with me while I go find Mush and the boys. Ain't nothing gonna get solved by you staring upstream at that shithole." Trout froze, staring back at Race who sighed  
and smiled softly, "Yeah, I know. Spot told me a long time ago. You got pissed and came here and I wanted to check on you, but he told me to leave it, that you was thinking and when you was ready you'd come back. I was afraid you was gonna throw yourself  
over the rail or something, but Spot said you just like to stare at Randall's to remind yourself of how much worse things could be." Trout's brow furrowed deeply, was that why he came here? He'd never really thought about it before but he was touched  
that Spot seemed to understand. He guessed all that watching did some good and forgave his friend and leader.

His pocket watch said it was nearly four thirty, he'd been gone a lot longer than he'd intended. The note said to stay with Marta. _Have to get home_ he wrote on his scrap of paper. _Say hi to Mush and Itey for me._ Race nodded, "I'll walk  
as far as I can with you. Heard some humdingers at Medda's a few nights ago." Trout rolled his eyes, Race's taste in jokes was notoriously terrible, and none of them came from the actors on the stage at Irving Hall, just the drunks hanging out in  
the cheap seats. Race waggled his eyebrows, "What's the difference between a pick-pocket and a Peeping Tom?" He grinned at Trout, waiting for encouragement that didn't come. "Awww, come on Trout, be a sport! Play along!" Begrudgingly, Trout pushed  
his hand forward, telling Race to go on. "One snatches your watch and the other watches your snatch!" He cackled uproariously while Trout just snorted, wondering why he put up with Race's horrible sense of humor. "I gotta 'nother one!" Race cried  
in a high pitched voice, still trying to get himself under control from the last knee slapper. "What did the hurricane say to the oak tree?" _Go on,_ Trout signed with a roll of his eyes, not willing to deal with Racetrack whining for attention  
again. "Hold onto your nuts, this ain't no ordinary blow job!" A sheepish chuckle escaped Trout's lips, rolling into a loud laugh. Once he got started laughing in his deliriously tired and over-stressed state, he couldn't stop. Race told one awful,  
dirty joke after another and Trout laughed until tears leaked out his eyes and his stomach hurt. Race watched his with awe, having never seen his silent friend let out more than a quiet chuckle. "Geez, you do a guy's self esteem good," Race chuckled  
after awhile, "I never seen a Brooklynite laugh so hard, I mean unless they was torturing puppies or something." Trout flipped him off and put a disgusted look on his face. He knew that Race was just razzing him. "I wish I had a camera, no one will  
believe me that I got a Brooky, 'specially you, practically peeing his pants." Trout reached over and shoved his shoulder hard enough that he lost his footing and nearly fell on his face, sending both of them into another fit of hysterical laughter.

They were a few blocks from the Lodging House still laughing and shoving each other as they walked when a tiny body came careening down the street and past them. They looked at each other for a moment before Race asked, "Wasn't that Pickle?" and pointed  
after the kid. Trout didn't waste time answering, just took off running and Race followed him. They easily caught up to the little boy and stopped him. His face was red from running and crying, tear streaked and generally terrified. His big blue eyes  
were even bigger than normal.

Even after the good laugh with Race put him in a better mood, Trout was not in the right state of mind to deal with Pickle. A quick look between them and an eye roll later, Race knelt down in front of the blubbering kid. "Easy Kid, what happened? Someone  
try to soak you?"

"There's a dead guy on our dock and he was talking to me!" Pickle wailed. The older boys glanced between him and each other, not sure whether to be amused or horrified.

"Slow down, Pickle. Dead guys don't talk, so was he dead or was he talking? Or is talking dead guys a Brooklyn thing?" Trout whacked Race on the back of his well oiled head and Race cussed good naturedly while throwing out meaningless and ridiculous threats.

"Well, he wasn't dead yet," Pickle hiccuped, "but with all that blood out of him, he can't keep being alive very long."

Race stood quickly, his eyes wide. "Did you know him? Was he one of us?"

Pickle shook his head, "No, he was old like Marta." Both of them chuckled, despite the serious situation. "Don't ever let her hear you say that, she'll soak you good." Race said.

Pickle scowled and latched onto Trout's hand, looking up at him. "He kept calling me you, telling me to whistle for Spot and get Kisser. Why'd he think I was you? Why would I whistle for Spot? Spot ain't a bird?"

Race and Trout had another conversation that was all eyes. Race's doubled in size as he let out a long low whistle. "He does kinda look like you as a kid, I mean, same hair and eyes, I guess. But who…" Trout shoved his friend with both hands just to shut  
him up and held a hand above his head. Race didn't understand but Pickle did.

"Nips?" he asked and Trout nodded emphatically.

Race scrunched his nose up, "How is that Nips?'

"'Cause he's so tall," Pickle answered matter of factly. "You want me to find him?" Trout nodded and signed _go on go on_ until the kid took off running. The older boys ran to the dock together, the smell of blood, hot and metallic in the cold,  
still air hitting them hard. Despite Race being the leader among them, Trout motioned for him to wait as he crept toward the still form propped up against Spot's tower. His face was heavily bruised and his clothes, torn and bloodied. A small, dark  
puddle had formed beside him, seeping through the wooden planks of the docks and dripping loudly into the water. At first, Trout thought they were too late, his eyes were closed, and his breathing was shallow, but then his green eyes opened and looked  
a Trout, a small, tired smile curling his lips. Trout beckoned Race to follow, and the smile on the man's face grew as he knelt down in front of him. "You alright, Mister?" Race asked, but those sad green eyes never left Trout's.

"I thought that little kid was you," Scat panted, his voice breathy and strained. "I got confused, but you ain't said nothing, so its gotta be you, right Trout?" A noise slipped, unbidden, out of Trout's throat that was somewhere between a gasp and a  
sob as he nodded.

"He-help Me," he demanded, looking up at Race who was staring at him like he'd sprouted wings instead of a voice. The words were muddled and a bit stuttered, but clear enough for Race to, for once in his life, not question, joke or argue. He did as Trout  
asked him and knelt on Scatter's other side, so that they could cradle him between them by clasping their hands behind his back and under his knees.

They locked eyes as they went to lift. "You owe me an explanation when this is over and done with," Race said, his voice serious and hard. Trout bobbed his head and they moved quickly to Poplar street, setting Scat on a sofa by the front desk. "I'ma go  
make sure Pickle finds Nips and then hook up with my boys like I came to do. I'll be back later." He turned without another word, leaving Trout, feeling like a piece of shit, to deal with Marta and Scatter alone. His friend was pissed at him, he didn't  
follow orders and now had a nearly dead guy and a soon to be hysterical woman on his hands. If Spot made it back, he was going to get his ass handed to him. He wanted to scream and yell and punch a wall, but he caught site of Scat staring at him listlessly  
and took off running to find Marta.

When he crashed through the kitchen door, he yelled what he meant to be her name, but all that came out was a jumbled roar of syllables. Her hair was tied up in a kerchief, her brown skirt tattered at the hem and her hands red and chapped from cold air  
and hot dishwater. She dried them on her apron and looked at him, worry furrowing her delicate brows. "Trout, what's wrong?" He didn't answer, just grabbed her damp hand and began to pull her to the door. "Trout…stop." She had her low voice on as  
she dug her heels into the floorboards. "Tell me what's going on." But he ran out of words; there were no words that would explain this. She watched him struggle and fail and placed a gentle hand on his arm, another on his broad cheek, drawing him  
in with her warm eyes. "Write it, sign it, do what you have to do, but calm down. We'll figure it out."

"No!" he roared and turned quickly, pulling away from her. Spot sent that girl to his selling spot so that he would be home before this happened, so that he could warn her it was coming, and he got so bogged down that he lost track of time! And now his  
stupid, broken brain wouldn't let anything out and he couldn't even tell her in a way that would be helpful at all. He turned back to her _Please. Come. Please,_ he signed out of desperation and started to walk back to the door. He paused waiting  
to see if she would follow. _I'm sorry,_ he signed over and over, his eyes beginning to water as he opened the door and pulled her towards the couch where Scatter lay. She dug her heels in like a child and shook her head as he tugged. He stopped,  
putting his arm around her and walking her over to him. "S-s-s-s-scat," he called quietly, as Marta dropped to her knees.

"Heya, Kiss," Scat whispered, and smiled weakly.

"You big idiot," she murmured, pulling his hand to her mouth and kissing it, her eyes never leaving his.

"Yeah, I loved you, too."

 _A/N: in case you're wondering, Trout has a condition now known as Apraxia. It's a misfiring, if you will, between the language center of the brain and the mouth, like verbal dyslexia. The words are all there in the brain and the thoughts form perfectly, but when it's time to talk they come out jumbled and incomprehensible. In today's world, children with Apraxia are generally identified by the time they are 2 or 3 and get into speech therapy which didn't exist in 1900, especially not for a kid growing up in a tenement in Queens. A kid like my poor Trout would have been shipped off to an asylum because he would have been deemed "dumb." As we know, Trout is nothing near dumb and I made sure he found Spot and Marta. I couldn't let him go to an asylum! There's a reason the early twentieth century asylums that are still standing keep ending up on supernatural documentary shows, they were horrific places to be._

 _Much love to my two faithful reviewers who I've loved getting to know through our PM's. Joker, thanks for the pep talk about Scat! livelearnlovesing, thank you for loving Scat so much that you made me question my decision to kill him and for making me feel like a literary superstar when I reviewed your writing. I walked around with a smile all day that day. Emily, (not Joker, the other one) my twin: oh hai!_

 _One more thing: I'm leaving for Disney World with my family on Saturday (7/16) and probably will not be writing while I'm there, when I come back I have 3 days to unpack, and then my parent's are coming into town because I have to have surgeryand I don't know how with it I'll be for the few days after that, so it might be August when I get the final 5-ish chapters of this monstrosity out, but I will get them out! I refuse to punk out with only 5-ish (I've proven time and again that I can't shut up and fit things into a guaranteed number of chapters) chapters left!_


	18. Chapter 18

****Chapter 18****

Pickle and Nips burst through the door of the lodging house and looked around. Marta sat on the floor next to the couch, staring at Scatter. Trout stood behind her, nervously biting at this nails, never letting his eyes leave her. He wasn't sure whether she was going to attack Scatter or break into hysterics, but he could feel the barely stoppered geyser of…something welling up behind the blank look on her face. Surprisingly, he was beginning to understand her more than he ever thought he could understand any girl. Pickle's face broke into a wide grin. "Hey," he cried, "my dead guy ain't dead!" Trout and Nips didn't even need to look at each other, they each knew what needed to be done. Nips hustled Pickle up the stairs, while Trout gently pulled Marta up to her feet and began trying to put her in her room, so that he and Nips could move the sofa back there. Scat didn't need to be on display for every lodging house newsie in Brooklyn.

She fought him, struggled to get out of his strong embrace until he said, "Stop," quietly, in her ear. She went still in his arms, his voice still unexpected enough to stop her in her tracks. A tremor of nerves flowed through her limbs and vibrated into his. He looked down into her frantic face, wishing he could tell her that he had things under control.

Something quieted in her as she stared up at him and all the fight drained from her and she took a deep but shaking breath. "You and Nips, bring him in here, away from the others?" She meant it to come out as an order, but her voice was lost, weak and small. She was asking a boy for permission. He nodded, sighing in relief and guided her to her her room, where she pressed herself against the wall. They carried the sofa in, trying their best not to disturb Scatter and set him down near her. She stared at him and then at her boys for a moment before blinking her eyes hard a few times. She didn't know what to do. Should she go to him? Run away? Try to fix him, even though he was so obviously too far gone, let him bleed to death in her sitting room alone? Trout watched her for a moment, waiting for her to make a move before walking to her washroom, where she hid a basket full of clean rags and rolled bandages made from sheets that couldn't me mended anymore. He knelt down next to Scat who looked between the two of them blearily. His hand shook as he pushed Scat's shirt up and winced at the jagged wound in his flank.

He reached for a rag, but Scat brushed his hand away. "Don't bother, Kid." he wheezed. "I ain't worth it."

Trout pressed the rag onto the wound with one hand, but spat in the other, grabbing Scat's. "You are." He held Scat's hand and gaze firmly until Scat nodded. Marta felt like she might explode, watching them have their moment. Didn't he remember why Scat left? Didn't he know what he did to her? _Traitor!_ her brain screamed, but on the outside she was still as a duck pond.

"Tell me he's ok," she demanded once Trout had him as patched up as he could. She stood and walked around behind the tall back of the rocking chair. Her eyes looked everywhere but at him, falling to rest on Spot's cane that still leaned next to the wall by her door where it had been since the news broke that he was with Dockside.

"He was when I left," Scat answered.

She breathed out and knelt on the floor next to him, while he looked back at her with a far away smile in his eyes. Her brain was busy screaming a tirade of insults and she hung on to her composure by a thread. "Can't say as much for you," she said, curtly. Trout elbowed her, scowling, and she did it right back, shooing him from the room. He sulked and retreated, but stayed right outside the door, listening intently.

Scat's breathing was shallow and his voice was just a weak whisper, but he still managed a chuckle before he answered, "Promise me that you'll let go, Kiss," he said. She wasn't ready to mourn when there was still so much unsaid between them. He smelled less like ink and more like whiskey than before, but all of the other components of his signature smell were there, and she drank it in hungrily but hated herself for it. It was the smell of their happiness together. "I mean it, Kiss. Let me go."

Angry at him for trying to leave her again and angry at herself for needing to be told to let him go, she snapped, "How do you know I didn't let you go a long time ago, huh? You were awful to me the other night at the church and you left me after I nearly gave…everything, all of me to save you from them. You went and shoved it in my face!" All of the hurt and anger came spilling out of her all at once. Everything she never told anyone was suddenly at the surface and flowing freely out of her mouth, as if her body was trying to rid itself of a poison. "Do you know what I had to do to buy your freedom? Do you know what he did to me? I did that FOR YOU! I won FOR YOU!" Her whole body trembled as her brain and heart tried to shut down the memories that she kept locked away so long. She was yelling, screaming even, as she mourned the pieces of herself that died so long ago in that basement. As much as she hated how much her feelings for the old Scatter still affected her, she also hated that she was hurting him in his final hours by acting like a petulant child.

His face went stony and still. "Don't let our last talk to be a fight." He reached back for her, his hand trembling. "I ruined us, Marta, and you deserved more than someone who would throw you away. I never loved no one else," he grunted. "I tried, but none of them was you."

She arched and eyebrow and let out a small smile, her mouth curving in a deliciously wicked lilt. He could always melt her anger away, and if there was anytime to let go of those too old feelings, it was now. "Do you really think Brooklyn, or New York…or the world even could handle another me? One is enough for this lifetime."

"You was always the only girl for me," he sighed, while clumsily trying to cup her cheek in his hand. She held it there for him, trying to stop herself from reveling in the familiar roughness of his touch. The pads of his fingers against her face might as well have been little matches burning into her skin. "It ain't right, but I'm glad Mick needed to get one more jab in on you. He did me a favor, letting me see you one more time. It was kind, in a fucked up kinda way." He grinned at her as best he could and she laughed half heartedly and pushed his hair back off of his forehead with the hand that wasn't still holding his to her cheek. He closed his eyes, smiling at the familiar gesture of affection and relaxed back into the sofa.

"I'm sure it had much less to do with kindness and much more to do with playing me a little more," she answered stonily. "I was one of his favorite playthings."

He grimaced and his fingers tightened against her cheek. "You were," he ground out through gritted teeth. "He talked about you a lot and I thought it was just to pick at me for a long time, but it was never about me. Youse why he picked up Darcy and ruined her. She was a sassy little street girl with a big mouth, just like you was. Now Spot's got that look for her and she'll ruin him too because Mick is deep under her skin." He was starting to slur his words like a drunk. "Poor girl."

"EVERYTHING is not my fault!" she screeched, throwing his hand to the floor. He grunted as the jerk of his arm sent a ripple of pain through him. They stared at each other, silent and serious for a moment. So much for letting things go. "Its not my fault that he found another girl to ruin! Its not my fault that they went after Spot! They've gone after every leader for years! Its not my fault that he's sick and crazy and obsessed…." A great heaving sob ripped through her, interrupting her rant and a big tear rolled down Scat's face as he watched her break down.

"Tell me what happened, Kiss. Tell me what he did to you."

She shook her head and struggled to control herself. "No. You don't want to die listening to that sob story." She couldn't face him, couldn't look into his dull, nearly lifeless green eyes and tell him what she had't spoken about to anyone. She'd rather he died thinking she betrayed him than die disgusted at what she let Mick do to her for him. As an adult, she understood what she didn't as a teenager. She didn't want to see the shame and pity that she knew would follow her telling the truth. No one would look at her like that.

But his hand was warm on her face, and those lovely eyes, the green of apothecary glass begged her for the truth and she couldn't deny him in his final moments. At least the looks wouldn't last long, and the secret would die with him. "I want to die knowing the truth, I want that week put to rest and I want to know that you forgave both of us."

She forced her eyes upward and took a deep breath. "Mick dragged me and all of the men and even the dancers down into the basement and he had them line up to fight me. They weren't supposed to knock me out, just hurt me and try to make me cry, make me beg for help. Seven of them signed up and he was calling all the rest pansies for not joining in 'the fun.' Niko was first."

Scat made a disgusted growl in his throat. "Jackass," he grumbled.

"Fights like one too," she agreed and he chuckled weakly. "I choked him until he tapped out."

"Nah!" he coughed in disbelief. "How'd you do that? Greek bastard is built like a brick shithouse!"

"I tripped him, put my knee in his neck and broke his hand," she answered with a sheepish grin. Putting Niko in his place twice was the only part of that night that she felt at all good about. Her grin faltered, "But he got me back. Grabbed me by my neck, touched me," her hand protectively drifted to cover her breasted Scat's eyes followed. His lips pressed into a thin, pale line and a weak flash of anger went through his eyes. "And Mick went crazy on him, put a knife to his neck and beat the hell out of him. I fought a few more and then Rudy. Rudy tried to help me and I broke his leg, and he congratulated me for it. I'll never forget that. He told me it was a battle won fairly, but it wasn't. He let me knock him down and then I kicked his knee in. He might have been fine afterwards, but I never will be. I will never forgive myself for taking advantage of his kindness that way." She felt sick to her stomach, but his thumb moved gently back and forth on her cheek, encouraging her softly, soothing all of the sharp edges that tried to keep the words pinned inside of her. "And then Mick took his turn. He snuck up on me and choked me. He kissed me and bit me," her voice was tiny and shaking. "He sat on me and…did things, but was looking at the other girls the whole time. And I played along because it made him let go of me a little. And there was this bottle, and Clarice helped me reach it and I smashed it on his head. Rudy told me I won and I ran. Mick called me the queen of Brooklyn and your majesty the whole time I was there, and when I left, Clarice said, 'Long live the queen,' and it never went away. I just wanted you, Teddy, just us. I didn't want what I got."

"Do you forgive me, Kiss?" he asked, his voice barely a whisper.

"Yeah, Scat. I forgive you. Do you forgive me?"

"There…ain't nothing…to forgive," he grunted. She knelt close to him and pressed a chaste kiss to his cheek, feeling like they were back at the beginning only he was the one, laid out and weak. She smoothed a thumb over his cheekbone and smiled. "Forgive yourself, Kiss. Stay away from the Fox."

"You know I can't stay away. You know I can't let him do to Spot what he did to me. Nothing has changed between Spot and I; we're family and I wont let Mick threaten my Family."

"Then promise…to be careful…and to give yourself…a break. You're not the bad one, here, Marta."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Trout took a step back from the door, his breath coming in quick gasps. Everything made sense now. He thought back and tried to remember if he ever noticed a difference in her between before that night she was missing and all the nights after, but of course he didn't. He was an eight year old boy. Even though he was more empathic and sensitive than most because he watched other's faces more, he remembered nothing about Marta from back then other than that she was sad and she was there.

His back pushed back against the wall of the hallway and his hand went to the back of his neck, rubbing so hard that the hairs at the nape of his neck scraped and tore at his skin. He had to do something, he had to figure something out. He couldn't stand by and wait for orders anymore, but he didn't know everything he needed to. Spot and Marta would have birds stationed everywhere that could help fill in the pieces. That was it. He needed to talk to the birds; he needed Mush and Itey. His feet led him to the desk and he swiftly scrawled all of his questions before thundering up the stairs to the bunk room. Nips looked up from the game of marbles he was distracting Pickle with, but his brow furrowed at the sight of Trout. Trout looked mean all the time; his heavy brow and sharp, prominent features made him seem severe, but there was power, action, gunpowder behind his sharp eyes now. He scanned the room and stamped his foot impatiently when he didn't see who he wanted. He needed to know about the Fox's Lair, but the Manhattan boys were out bullshitting with Racetrack. "Trout? What gives?" Nips called. Trout made a hand sign that he and Race made up to represent Mush and then shoved the messy list of questions in Nips' face. The taller boy read through it quickly. "You need to know this? From Mush?" Trout nodded once. Nips grinned. "You want me to ask the questions while you make him squeal like a piggy?" Again, Trout nodded. Nips winked at Pickle. "Stay here, Kid, the others should be back soon. Don't bug Marta." Pickle nodded and went back to working on his shooting.

The two seconds of Brooklyn walked down the stairs and to the lobby in unison, a singular wall. The front door opened as they reached the bottom and in sauntered the four Manhattanites. Before any of them saw it coming, Trout had Mush shoved up against the wall by his shoulders. Mush was flustered and shocked by his friends behavior; Trout had never been anything but nice to him before, even though he knew that Spot used him as his muscle. "Trout, what the hell?" he cried. "I didn't do it!"

"Trout! Damnit!" Race was at his elbow, clawing at his arm. "Goddamnit, put him down! What the fuck is going on with you?" Nips pushed him away and got up next to Trout, right in Mush's face.

"I don't know what crawled up Trout's ass, but something got in there and lit a few grains of gunpowder in his gut. He needs to know some things about the Fox. And you're going to tell him. We ain't in the mood for babying you." Neither one could deny the thrill of familiarity, this felt right, like Spot was home, leaning in the shadows and listening to the results.

"Let him down Trout!" Race bellowed, and Trout had to will himself not to look over as he shook his head.

"He wants to know about a woman named Clarice and a guy called Rudy," Nips stared at Mush, whose wide brown eyes were fearful and confused. Despite all the muscle on his body, he was no match for Trout. Nips casually rested his elbow on Trout's shoulder while he stared at the boy held against the wall.

"Ask him yourself, jackass!" Race hissed. Nips turned around and slugged him, bloodying his nose.

"Shut the hell up, Race! He can say one, maybe two words at a time! He wasn't keeping nothing from you! He didn't talk to no one but Spot until last week!" Shock made Trout loosen his grip and Mush shoved himself free. He stared at Nips, wondering when he slipped, when he ever spoke in front of Nips.

Nips shrugged and grinned at him, "Birds."

Race held his sleeve to his nose and muttered under his breath to himself while Mush straightened his shirt, and tucked his hat in his pocket. "You ain't gotta hold me down, I'm here to help, ain't I? Clarice is the madame, in charge of the dancing girls," Mush answered. "She's a scary broad, that one She walks with a limp and has a fancy cane kinda like Spot's, all shiny and stuff. She looks real fancy and done up, but she talks like she ain't had no schooling. I heard her say she used to be one of the girls before she hurt her leg, I don't think she could dance with a limp like that. But I guess it wouldn't really stop her from…ya know, doing the other part of her job."

Nips looked to Trout, who seemed to be deep in thought. "Trout?" The dark boy looked up and signed _how,_ tapping his leg. "The limp and the cane, do you know what happened?"

Mush's dark skin blanched. "One of the girls I talked to said that Mick did it, but she didn't know why or how, just that he kept Clarice as the Madame to remind them all to behave themselves."

Racetrack was still pacing and muttering to himself and Trout couldn't take another second of it. He grabbed Race and gave him a shove towards the door. "Out. Now," he growled, shocking everyone in the room.

Nips checked Trout's face, before sighing and rubbing his own. "We could use your help, Race, we really could. But if alls your gonna do is piss Trout off, you might as well head back to Duane St. Marta's gonna be a wreck when she comes out, we gotta get an undertaker for Scatter and I gotta feeling Trout's got something brewing in that crazy head of his." Trout's fist shot out and connected with his arm. "Ow! Ok, ok, not crazy. But if you want to help, Race, you haveta leave the talking thing till later, or forget it all together. You ain't helping nothing right now."

Race threw a dark look at Trout before sniffing and wiping his nose. "I'll go get the undertaker, I gotta get outta here," he grumbled. Once he was gone, Trout's shoulder's slumped as he went to the desk and began scribbling.

 _Go to the Fox and see if you can get Clarice to come and meet with Marta. Let her set the terms, so long as it happens soon, before Spot's gauntlet. We need an inside man…woman. She crossed Mick once. She might do it again. Don't talk to anyone else, none of the other girls about it. We can only risk her knowing._ He slid the paper across the desk to Mush who handed it to Nips.

"Now?" Mush asked. Trout nodded and reached into his pocket, doling out a nickel and pantomiming eating, but Mush smiled and handed it back. "I got my own dinner, but thanks Trout. The girls tip pretty good." Trout pushed Nips and waved at Mush before sining that he was sorry. Mush smiled brightly, "It's ok, man. You guys got a lot on your plates and you wanted to know quickly. I get it." He rushed back out the door, leaving Nips and Trout with Itey and Snipeshooter.

"You guys go upstairs and get some rest," Nips said. "I gotta check on Marta." They trouped upstairs and Trout waited until they were out of sight to lean his back against the desk and slide to the floor. He buried his face in his big hands and growled at himself. Nothing was right and he wanted out. He didn't know how Spot did this, all the time. He wanted to run away, find somewhere where no one knew him, no one knew that the could talk or anything else about him. He wanted freedom from Brooklyn and newsies and gangs. From hunger and bruised knuckles. He wanted to make up with sun on his face, but he was in Brooklyn. Tomorrow, he would wake up to smog, and soot and newspaper ink, same as every other day.

 _A/N: Heeeeeeeyyyy! I'm alive and I finally got this chapter semi under control so I can move forward with the plot! I am healing comfortably at home, sore and stiff, but healthier than I've been in months! Thanks to livelearnlovesing, Joker is Poker with a J and coveredinbees for the well wishes and sweet notes! I might have another chapter coming tomorrow depending on how crazy my house is tomorrow….its my first day since surgery momming on my own. Yikes._


	19. Chapter 19

He stared blankly out the window at the square of houses, trying to get his bearings and figure out where exactly in Brooklyn he was, but all the houses looked so much the same as all the others. There was nothing distinctive to help him. He and his boys knew the city better than just about anyone, but this square was just about as boring as they came. He stood with the quilt from his bed wrapped around his shoulders and one hand, it's fingers long and slender and slightly crooked from the number of breaks and jams they'd sustained through the years, pressed against the cold glass of the window. The cold seeping in from the outside was his only connection to his city, one of only two things he'd ever had a meaningful relationship with. He felt so much older than sixteen just then.

He was finally able to move around without anchoring himself to the walls as he walked for fear of tipping over. The laceration in his eyebrow was healing and the other scrapes were beginning to itch and flake away while his bruises blanched from the blacks and purples of freshness to faded greens and yellows. He knew he didn't have long until Mick came back and told him it was time to put his money where his mouth was. He'd seen Haystack a few more times, always looking up at him. He even thought he saw Mush once, which confused him. He wished he knew what Marta was doing.

Darcy hardly left his side since the day Scatter disappeared. Something kept him from facing that Scat died, even after ten years of resenting and mistrusting the guy, he never wanted him dead. He just wanted him to realize that he was an idiot and come back. He wanted to see Marta with a big silly grin on her face again like she had when he was around.

When word was sent that Mick was on his way, Spot watched the life drain out of her. "You can't barge in again," she said softly as she brushed her hair. "He'll think you're sweet on me and you'll end up just like Ted. Mick's…not right in the head and he'll go crazy on you. What he did to Niko and Ted will look tame compared to what he will do to you. Please. Stay out." He stared back at her from the window. He hadn't slept since the blow to the head stopped forcing him to sleep. He woke with a yelp and a start, sometimes waking when his feet hit the floorboards, ready to fight. The first few nights he tried to make himself go back to sleep, but when he just woke again a few hours later, with his heart pounding and his fists swinging, he stopped and just stared into the darkness. The longer he stayed in the brownstone, the more he looked like he was getting younger rather than older. His eyes were wider and more lost looking, with deep, bruise-like shadows underneath and all of the food Darcy made sure he got took away some of the sharper angles of his face and physique. He cheeks were rounder and softer than they'd been since before he found Marta. He was not filled out by any stretch of the imagination, he just wasn't as scrawny and angular. She was always bringing food, complaining about fattening him up, but he refused to eat a lot of it, breaking it into pieces and only eating a fraction of what she made.

She watched him, waiting for an answer. He turned to her, keeping that hand rooted to the glass, attached to Brooklyn and Marta where things were real and made sense. "I ain't gonna sit around and listen to him kick the crap outta you while he yells about loving you!" he snapped and his voice cracked and his chest heaved. The quilt dropped to the floor as he stared at her in wonder. The past and the present were overlapping each other and he was having a hard time keeping his feet on the floor.

Her head tilted to the side, her cornsilk colored eyebrows furrowing, "He doesn't love me, Spot," she said quietly, "and he never said he did. I don't have anymore illusions about that anymore, thanks to you."

He shook himself, hating the unfocused, confused fog that seemed to be eating away at who he was. "I don't know why I said that," his voice was soft and terrified. "I'm losing my shit here, Darcy. I gotta get out."

"I got a feeling that he's not really coming to see me, but to check up on you. See if you're ready."

He turned back to the window and pressed his forehead against the glass, feeling the comforting shiver of goosebumps run through the length and width of his skin. He was more ready a week before when he was bleeding and retching and unable to stand than he was at this moment. He wanted to be home in the Lodging House, in his carefully constructed world of rules and order. Where he was untouchable. Where everything made sense.

The feather light touch of her fingers on his shoulder made him jerk away instinctively, before forcing his body to relax, but her touch didn't falter and he crossed his arm over his shoulder and covered her hand with his. "Promise me you'll stay out, Spot," she whispered, pressing her body into his back, her head coming to rest just between his shoulder blades. "I won't let you die trying to protect me, you got bigger battles to fight. You gotta stay alive and get away from Mick free and clear." Her touch warmed him, pushing the ice away. He wasn't sure whether he liked it or wanted the familiarity of the cold.

He squeezed her hand more tightly and pressed his head harder against the glass, the pressure and cold ache somehow making him feel better. "I ain't promising nothing," he gritted out through a clenched jaw. "I don't make promises I can't keep, but I'll do me best."

He felt her smile into his back, the contracting muscles in her face shifting against his that were taut with anxiety. "I know. Thats what makes you better than them," she hummed into his spine. "They tell me what I want to hear; he tells me only lies. You never lie to me, even though I don't like what you say sometimes."

"Don't talk about the others, 'specially him," he growled, his hand tightening even more around hers until she whimpered. "I'm sorry," he muttered, loosening his grip until his hand just rested on hers again. "But leave them out of it."

"I'm sorry," she whispered and nuzzled her face further into the soft spot between his shoulder blades. Her tiny hand ran up his ribs making shivers run down his spine, but not the placating shivers of cold. These left him warm and invigorated with a tight knot of need in the pit of his abdomen. She pulled back a moment and nudged his body, asking him to turn around and he obliged, letting his head leave the comforting glass and fall forward to rest on top of her silky, blond hair. His hand came to rest on her narrow shoulders as she picked open the buttons on his undershirt and began to softly, curiously and tentatively kiss the skin on his breastbone before stepping onto her tip toes to to trail them along his clavicle. His hands slid smoothly from her shoulders and along her neck into her fine hair, the delicate strands tangling around his fingers as he tilted her head back and brought his lips to hers.

She drew his bottom lip into her mouth and gently tightened her teeth around it, letting it slide back out, dragging against her bite. He moaned, gripping her hair more tightly and pressing his hips into hers. When his lip was free from the tortuous but wonderful trap her mouth had snared it in, he pulled away panting and lifted her up into his arms, burying his face in her neck while her legs wrapped tightly around his slim hips. His hands squeezed at her thighs and the subtle curve of her derriere, feeling the hardness of muscle and the softness of her flesh in his hands. The heat that radiated off of her was as intoxicating as the smell of her perfume, the same perfume he'd hated only a few short days ago. "No marks," she gasped as he bit down on the tendon connecting her neck and shoulder, "he'll know. He's still coming."

He nodded and released her skin from his mouth and continued to kiss and suck and tilted her head back to grant himself better access to her soft, perfumed skin, her racing pulse point and her small, round ear. She tasted soapy and sweet and he wanted her like he had never wanted anything before. "Darcy," he grunted hungrily as he rested her hips on the edge of the washstand, knocking the heavy, porcelain basin to the floor. The crash of breaking pottery didn't disturb the two lovers, as wrapped up in each other as they were. She caught his mouth in another frantic, dominating kiss full of thrusting tongues and grazing teeth. Her hand pressed in the crook of his elbow and he let her guide his hand down to her breast, smirking and the breathy gasp that came from her when his thumb ran over the hard nub of her nipple through her shirt. His hand cupped around the soft flesh gently, kneading it and testing it for what made her eyes close, what made those soft, wanting whimpers come out of her lips that had turned full and pink from kissing. When his hand left it, her lip pouted and he caught it in a deep kiss while his lithe fingers undid the first few buttons of her blouse. The warm skin under her blouse was just as sweet and soap scented as her neck, but warmer, further pushing the cold out of his bones. He rested his nose in the indent between her breasts and drank in the smell, before his hands pressed back up her abdomen, shoving her the open edges of her blouse aside to touch the soft skin there and return his mouth to the place on her neck where he could feel her heartbeat against his tongue, racing wildly. Her hand slipped, her fingers barely touching his skin, down his abdomen further and further, so slowly that he though he might die in anticipation.

"Take me to the bed, Spot," she murmured in his ear as her fingers trailed along the drawstring waits of his shorts. He pulled away and stared into her smoky green eyes. Her face was flushed and her lips were swollen. His heart was pounding against his ribs. He wanted her, all of her, everything she was offering, but suddenly couldn't take it. He shook his head and dropped his gaze to the floor.

"You should go get ready. He'll be here soon. I'll bet he doesn't like sloppy seconds." He felt like such a shit saying it, but he needed to push her away. She didn't want Mick to hurt him for barging in on them, and he found that he didn't want her getting hurt because he couldn't control himself, even though she obviously wanted it to. She pushed him a step back, but held his hand in hers, searching his face. His hair guarded his expression, but she understood and slid down off the washstand.

"Stay in the kitchen, its as far away from my room as you can get. You won't hear as much. I'll clean this up when I'm done."

"Be careful, Darce."

"This is my job, Doll," she answered sadly and pulled her hand away from his. "I do what I'm told. If he says shut up and take it, that's what I do. I'd be dead already if I didn't know that." Her soft footsteps moved away from him and towards the door and she was silent a moment. "Don't trust a damn thing he says unless he has proof, Spot. You haven't seen a fraction of what he is capable of and I promise that you don't want to. He'll bait you and tease you. Don't forget that you are here for his amusement, everything else comes second."

He waited in his room for Mick to arrive and then snuck down the back stairwell to the kitchen. As the screaming and crying and ceiling rattling thumps from her body hitting the floor started, he began to pick at a scab on his arm. His nail dug in a little further with every disheartening sound from upstairs. He wasn't even watching what he was doing, his eyes stared ahead angrily as he tried not to hear. He tried not to think or hear, he tried not to notice the glasses on the drainboard rattling with the force of Mick's blows. He only focused on the feeling of his nail digging in. He focused on the dull ache, the slip of blood under his finger, the metallic smell. He heard the drops of blood his the floorboards, but continued on. He would have grabbed a knife and craved into himself if he had been thinking of it, if it would have helped him drown out Darcy's cries better. She was begging now, pleading with Mick for something. Her cries were so hysterical that they carried through the thin walls as if he was still in his bedroom next to hers.

It wasn't the first time he'd resorted to this. When he was little, hiding in closets from the men in the tenement, he'd pick the scabs on his knees. His mother would pull him out and paddle him for staining his clothes again. His knees were scarred still. He shook his head, thinking of the tenement was just as bad as thinking about Darcy screaming. But the parallels were there. Him, alone with a woman, a woman who wasn't strong like Kisser, who couldn't save herself from anything that was thrown her way, not allowed to leave a house ruled by someone awful. He didn't remember why they lived there, who the men were, but they were awful. They made her scream just like Darcy. They held her down and did things to her, things that she was never the same after. Things his little brain couldn't have begun to understand. They did things to him too, so he hid from them and his mother let him. She couldn't stop them if they got a hold of him, but she did let him hide and even lied about knowing where he was.

A slap to his face pulled him out of the deep recesses of his brain. Mick stood in front of him, the picture of a debonair older man. His clothes were tidy, his hair combed and straightened. The only thing that gave any clue as to what he'd spent the past hour doing was the lingering hint of lilac perfume that clung to him. He stood, sneering down at Spot and drinking a glass of water. "Bad day dreams?"

"Piss off," Spot answered. He looked down at his arm and winced at the damage he'd done. There was a puddle of blood the size of a dinner plate one the floor next to him, and it streaked his shorts and the front of his shirt. "Where's Darcy?"

"Ooooh, demanding today are we?" he mocked, setting his water glass back on the counter and straightening his cuffs. "She's…recovering. In her room. We had a rather strenuous business meeting today." He smiled predatorily and it took everything in Spot to not leap on him and tear his throat out with his bare hands.

"Tell me about Kisser," Spot growled, standing up and washing his arm off in the sink before wrapping a towel around it and leaning against the countertop.

Mick grinned, like a child getting to tell a tale about how big the fish he caught from the dock's was. "I'm really going to hate having to kill you. You'd make the perfect protege. You're curious to the point of being annoying, nearly inhuman with your emotions and you don't like being told no. Its like looking in a goddamned mirror." Spot rolled his shoulders, like it would help him let the commentary roll off of his back instead of enraging him like it was threatening to.

"Answer the question," he growled flatly.

Mick's grin never faltered, "She used her assets to buy her freedom."

Thinking about Marta having the kind of assets that Mick was hinting at turned his stomach. "No she didn't. Kiss ain't a whore."

"Maybe not, but she was desperate. She bought her freedom, Scatter's and even yours by letting my enjoy myself with her. Spot gagged at the thought, physically retched. She did it for him too. Not just herself, not just Scat. She sold herself to a man who was the devil on earth for him.

"What did you want with me? I was seven, just a kid!" he balked.

"Nothing really, you were just a bargaining chip. A bit of particularly tasty leverage that happened to be the perfect bait to draw her to me."

"Am I just bait now? Have you held me this long just to see if she'd come and save me?"

"Well, that would be a lovely little bit of luck if it happened, but no. I really do want you." The statement made him shiver deep down to his core. Though it was one of the only things Mick said that didn't seem at least a little sexual, it just rubbed him wrong and made him think of the tenement again. "I want you to lead this with me. I want Dockside to be yours in a few years. If Dearest Kisser decided to come along for the ride, then I'd happily kick Darcy out on the streets to give Kisser the place that she so rudely turned down ten years ago. I'd only punish her a little for her insolent behavior."

"Say I believe you that Marta whored herself out to you. How'd Scat end up here anyway."

With another knowing smirk, Mick answered, "I didn't have to say anything, all of my boys were there, watching everything. They saw her get fondled by Niko." The minute expression change, the tightening of his lips and a flick downward of his eye brow did not escape Spot's attention. Mick didn't like that Niko touched Marta, he felt possessive maybe even protective over her. Interesting. "They saw when I laid her on the ground in the same basement where you were originally brought and ravaged her body. They all watched while I took her."

"Yeah, then how'd she get away?" Spot smirked, knowing now that Mick was full of shit. His story still didn't make sense and while a dumber guy than Spot Conlon might have been fooled by his oily, salesman routine, Spot Conlon wasn't. He was a first rate snake oil salesman, a sleazy hood in a cheap suit, and he wouldn't get the upper hand. But Spot could play this game too, lead him on, pump some more details out of him.

Mick frowned. "I let her go when I got what I wanted from her. It only took a day or two for those blabbermouths to spread the word outside of the Fox and into the city, all the way to dear Scatter, who was ripped in two that his girl would betray him and paid her back the only way he could think of, by running back into the arms she just freed him from. Simple really."

"You turned them against one another."

"I don't lose. I might not always get my way, but I never lose." He looked the boy up and down. "Its time. Darcy will bring you your clothes and Rudy will be by in a bit to collect you."

"Can't wait," Spot deadpanned.

 _A/N: I hope you all had your big kid pants on for that little juicy tidbit of Darcy and Spot second base action. That scene has been ready for weeks, I just needed to get to where it belonged! And now we head into the climax! Spot's gauntlet, Marta's epic return to face Mick...I'm excited. Are you excited?_


	20. Chapter 20

Spot Conlon was dressed for the first time in almost two weeks and he looked damn good, if he did say so himself. The extra bits of food had done his height a few inches of service somehow, since the cuffs of his pants were nearly three inches off the floor. As he looked at himself in the mirror in Darcy's room he smiled sadly, imagining Marta making wisecracks about him being ready for the day Brooklyn flooded and washed away into the East River. What his trousers lacked in length, his hair seemed to have gained. The shock of dishwater blond bangs that normally hung over his eyes now nearly reached his mouth. Darcy nicked some pomade out of Mick's things and he combed his hair back with it, liking how it made him look like a man instead of like a kid. He wished his cane was hung in his suspender loop, but had won many fights without it. He was thankful Darcy kept her promise and he still had his red suspenders and his favorite dark blue shirt to wear. If he was going to die today, he might as well look snazzy doing it. He might be street trash, crazy, mean and completely and utterly doomed, but he had class.

Rudy stood by the door when he slowly descended the front stairs, a middle aged man with hair that was once sandy, but now seemed more grey than anything, his grey green eyes were like something out of a faded watercolor painting, watery and washed out, staring out of his worn face dully. The wrong doings and misgivings of his life were written all over his face, in the deeply etched lines around his mouth and between his eyes, in the stoop in his shoulders that would be more fitting to a man twice his age. Despite all of the confusion and anxiety whirling around in his head, Spot managed to plaster on his signature smirk as he looked Mick's second thoroughly up and down. "Rudy, I take it? You my date to Mick's little shindig?"

Rudy snorted. "Don't underestimate him, Kid. Mick's had years to think this 'party' up and knows more about you than he's known about any challenger or recruit we've ever had. Be ready for everything and anything in there."

"Gee thanks, Pops." Rudy's hand was fisted in the collar of his shirt, yanking him forward off of his feet in a hot second. He scowled, his face too close to Rudy's.

"Kisser was smart enough to heed my warnings and take the assistance I offered her. I'd suggest you be at least as smart as she is and do the same. Do. Not. Underestimate. Mick."

"Put. Me. Down." Spot ordered in the same tone. "I don't take orders from no one and I don't need your goddamn help." Rudy set him down and he straightened his shirt before throwing a punch at the older man's face. "Don't fucking touch me unless youse willing to get touched back."

"Spot," Darcy's voice called from the stairs. He turned to look at her, she was dressed in a deep purple gown with black trim and a small black hat with a veil over her eyes on her head. All he could see was dress and hat, the deep colors swallowed her up and overpowered her. Somewhere under the brocade and rouge and velvet, she was wilting. "Stop being an asshole and cooperate. Everyone who offers you help isn't trying to stab you in the back." Her voice was weary and soft.

"Maybe not, but its better to be ready so you can dodge the knife." Her eyes left his and went behind him, but he didn't have time to turn around and see what she was looking at, before Rudy shoved a sack over his head and bound his wrists behind his back. He was marched out the door of the brownstone and shoved him into the back of a wagon.

Haystack wasn't at his post when Rudy hauled Spot out into the wagon. When he saw Mick leave before, he figured it was a safe time to go find himself a bite to eat, so when he returned to see the wagon in front of the house and the blonde girl from inside stepping up into it, he was shocked. The only time he'd seen the blonde girl leave was the day she took a message to Trout, the day Scatter ended up dead in Marta's sitting room. As the stooped, greying man, grey in a way that made it seem like all the life was fading out of him, like a curtain left in a sunny window too long, snapped the reins to tell the horse to go, Stack saw the movement in the back of the wagon. A deep, navy blue shirt and red suspenders, sat up, the face of the person wearing them was obscured by a flour sack but he'd know those suspenders anywhere. He stuck his pointer fingers into the sides of his mouth and whistled loudly, low high low high, help is coming, and watched Spot's spine straighten as he tried to figure out where the sound came from.

He followed the wagon, close enough to keep them in sight, but far enough away that the man and the girl didn't notice him until they passed by the Fox's Lair, where he split off to find Mush. Haystack used the rooftops to his advantage, keeping and eye on the cart carrying Spot while both keeping out of the notice of any Dockside boys hanging around and easily finding Mush in a back alley, making out with one of the corset-clad waitressing prostitutes from the tavern. "Mush!" he yelped, with his voice breaking as he jumped to the ground. "Let's go! It's time! Get your jollies in on your own time! We gots work to do!" Mush smiled charmingly at the girl and took off after the small Brooklynite. "Get the others, I gotta find the wagon. Meet me back at the butcher shop four blocks over!" Stack yelled and took off running the direction he last saw the wagon going.

Mush ran as fast as his legs would take him back to Poplar Street and barged in. Marta was doing the books at the desk and looked up at him, knowing what he was going to say before he said it. "Nips!" she yelled. "Trout! They've moved Spot! Time to go!" She smiled at Mush, "Thanks for your help, Mush."

"Haystack will be waiting at a butcher shop four blocks from the Fox, they took Spot somewheres in a wagon and he was following it. You need me to lead you there?"

She smiled. "Nah, I know Brooklyn better than you do, and Trout and Nips might even know it better than me. We'll manage. You go get ready to head home. You done good, Kid. You helped a lot with this whole Dockside thing and put up with Trout's um…negotiating tactics like a champ. I really appreciate it." Mush smiled and headed up the stairs as Trout, Nips and Race headed down. Marta excused herself to her room, and returned in her old newsie clothes. Her hair was bound in a tight braid down her back and she took a deep breath before pulling her coat and hat on. "Anything goes boys, so I hope you're not just packing marbles and slingshots." Each one pulled a pocketknife out of their pockets and Marta couldn't help but laugh. He face sobered quickly though. "I have no clue what we're walking into here, boys. Mick is smart, cunning, imaginative and sadistic. I was expecting us to be going into the Fox, but apparently he's raised the stakes. Be quiet, listen to anything Stack tells you about what he's seen or heard, and never turn your back on Mick. Last but not least, if I tell you to get out of there, you three run like hell. Grab Spot and run like the devil is at your heels, because once Mick's seen your faces, he basically is. That man is the devil and I don't want him getting his claws into any of you. So if I say run, you cheese it like the bulls are after you, you got me?" They looked between one another and nodded reluctantly.

"What are you gonna do when we all run outta there?" Nips asked quietly.

She smiled tightly. "If I say run, you run. You don't worry about me. You run." Trout narrowed his eyes at her and she shook her head in return. "Don't argue with me. If I say run, you four are going to fucking run. Run and don't look back. Take care of each other like you always have and get back here safely."

"Yes ma'am" they answered, all taken aback by her swearing. Kisser cursing wasn't rare by any means, but she had a few words she used regularly and "fuck" just wasn't one of them.

"Good, now lets get going. We don't want to keep them waiting." Her smile was both brilliant and terrifying as she shoved them out the door into the cold sunshine.

Spot was rattled and clattered in the back of the wagon for the next fifteen minutes before the noise and the motion stopped, and pairs of rough hands dragged him down and then not so gently hauled him up many flights of stairs. "Gee, Mick's coming up in the world. I never heard of a tavern with eight stories before."

"Shut up, Maggot," a voice he recognized as Niko's hissed.

"You're not at my tavern, Spot," Mick's voice cut through. "Kisser's took place at the Fox's Lair because she gave me no other option. You, I've had time to prepare for." The sack was pulled from his head and immediately his heart dropped to the very pit of his stomach. A long, dark tenement hallway sprawled along in front of them, the carpet was wrong and the walls weren't quite grubby enough. It wasn't THE tenement, but it was close enough. It was chosen just for him. His heart pounded against his eardrums, not letting him hear anything thing but the heavy base beat of his own blood racing through him. Blood that until this very moment he had wanted desperately to keep inside him. At this moment though, he wanted a knife to slit his own wrists. He wanted anything that would keep him from reliving Mick's twisted version of his own nightmares. He looked up at Mick and realized he was still talking, though Spot couldn't hear him over the overwhelming whomp whomp whomp whomp in his ears.

"H-how?" he whispered, his voice breaking through the panic that clouded his mind. He cleared his throat, only allowing himself that one single word that sounded weak or thrown off by Mick's knowledge. He made sure he sounded harsh and demanding when he asked, "How did you know about this?"

"I told you, _Ciarán_. We've been preparing for this for years. Scatter helped, though he didn't know it. He always was a touch slow. Then Trots and finally, my darling Darcy helped us out with making sure the details were all right these past few weeks. While I didn't ask Niko to hit you as hard as he did, it turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Once you were sleeping and not unconscious, it gave Darcy the opportunity to listen in on your nightmares, so that we could make sure to recreate them for you." Darcy stood next to him, her pale skin red with shame. The veil over her eyes did nothing to hide the tears, but he didn't see them. His mind was in flames, engulfed in rage. He let her in and not a half hour after telling him that not everyone would stab him in the back, she did. Fear was put on the back burner and he no longer wanted death. At least not for himself. Mick smiled at the wild look in the boy's eye. "The rules are simple. There are twelve rooms in this hall, and one of my boys in each one. Rudy will remain in the hall keeping watch. You have to defeat, meaning at least knock out if not kill the person in each room to move on to the next. I will be in 8L, the last room. Make it past me, and you're free. Die and I send you home to the Poplar Street Lodging House in boxes for Kisser. You can also surrender to me and take your place as my new second in command." Spot, even in his rage didn't miss the look Rudy shot Mick. The betrayal and anger plain on his face.

"Which room will you be in, Doll?" Spot snarled at Darcy.

"Not 8A, which is the only one you need to concern yourself with for now," Mick answered, gesturing grandly towards the first room.

 _A/N: I don't normally do split POV like I did here. But after stressing that the Brooklyn boys were watching the house and the tavern so they could help him out, I figured Stack deserved his little moment. So, here we are! The beginning of the end! The way this gauntlet has fleshed out means these chapters are a little shorter than my average, which I'm sure some are cheering about. Its not my fault, I'm physically unable to shut up, both in text and IRL….maybe that's why I like mute characters like Trout. Anyway, I have a new little series started, its mostly Trout and Spot, with some happy Kiss and Scat and the beginning (because I couldn't let Scat die with everyone thinking he was a jerk, when really he was a good guy who made a big, idiotic mistake) and Race joins the cast after a bit. I like writing Trout and Race and their Bromance….at least I'm pretty sure it's a bromance. Anyhow, the new story is called Spitshakes and Slingshots if you want to check it out._


	21. Chapter 21

Marta, Trout, Nips and Race hurried their way and towards Red Hook and the Fox's Lair to the butcher shop. Haystack wasn't there yet, but there was no telling how far he had to follow the wagon before he could scope the new location out as well to let them know what they were up against. Even with all he had to see and remember, it wasn't long before they heard the long low note and then one that swept up from low to high, letting them know he was there with news for them and saw him waving them up onto the roof of a nearby building. "He's at a tenement about twenty minutes from here. It's condemned so its empty and they're on the eighth floor. All of the windows that you could get to from the fire escapes are nailed shut on the inside and Mick has guys posted at all of the doors, the bottoms of the fire escapes and one on the roof. Most of them though are on the eighth floor, one guy in each apartment and Mick is waiting with the blonde girl in the apartment at the end of the hall."

"Where is Clarice?" Kisser asked.

"She's the sixth apartment, but Rudy, the second, is in the hallway. He has to call out to Mick each time Spot clears a room. She's the one who let me know the windows were nailed shut. Spot just went into the first room when I ran." Stack paused, looking uncomfortable. "He didn't look good, Kiss. He looked kinda crazy."

"That bastard," she grunted, her voice thick with tears as the pieces of Mick's plan fit together in her head. The significance of the tenement building was not lost on her or Trout. He had his eyes closed and his head turned away. They'd both seen him with that look before, when the memories of his youngest days took control and he didn't seem to know what was real. It hurt them to know that Mick was putting him in that kind of state on purpose. .

Race looked between the group of Brooklynites, confused, hoping someone would explain what they were talking about. He still hadn't fully forgiven Trout for keeping his secret for so long, but was trying to keep his promise and help them. "Care to enlighten the rest of us, Ya Majesty?" She had him by his collar, his upper body hanging over into the empty space below before he could say another word. Her knee dug into his thigh, pinning him to the slightly raised ledge around the roof. Her face was close to his, her eyes that terrifying gold like a lioness on a hunt. Her knee and the collar of a threadbare shirt were the only things between him and a headlong plummet to the cobblestones below.

"Never. EVER. Call me 'your majesty' again," she hissed in a dangerous, low whisper.

"Ok! Ok! Lemme up!" he yelped.

"Kiss," Trout said gently, pulling at her elbow. It sounded like Kit, but no one corrected him when he started saying it. "Up."

"There won't be a warning next time," she growled, pulling Racetrack back to his feet and pushing him into Trout. "He's tried to recreate what Spot ran from when he was little, the place that he's trapped in when he has nightmares." She drifted like a boat without a mooring to the other side of the roof, away from the boys. She needed to be away from them and their joking, to think without them interrupting. Mick didn't just want Spot to die during the fight, he wanted Spot stripped of everything he was if he came out the other side. He planned a full scale attack on the few fragile emotions Spot had left after his life before the newsies.

Through years of waking up to his wild and vivid dreams, she pieced together a vague understanding of what he experienced before she found him. Likely the same understanding that Mick put together. She shuffled the pieces of information in her head like tarot cards, the old with the new, hoping that she could deal them out and make sense of them before Spot's time ran out.

"Kiss," Trout called her again, pulling her away from her mental tarot deck. He spread a paper out in front of her, showing her a detailed mapping of the tenement and surrounding buildings. It was thorough and well drawn, just like the one he drew her to show her where the Brownstone was in relation to the tavern. He and Haystack both made notes, Stack's more hurried and younger handwriting looking distinctly different from Trout's very uniform and controlled script. She drank in all the information and the cards started to fall into the right place. At the bottom, Nips wrote _need diversion, ambush them._ She held her hand out for the pencil and crossed out "ambush them," circling "diversion." Her cards finally dealt in a way that didn't spell death for all of them. Finally, there was hope.

"We need enough of a diversion to get into the building, but not one that will alert any of the other Dockside Boys, especially Mick, that we are there."

"Then I guess its good that us Manhattan boys don't follow orders like good little Brookies," Mush called cheekily as he hauled himself up onto the roof. Itey, Snipeshooter and a few of the older Brooklyn boys, Red, Lonny and Mook followed suite, grinning sheepishly. "We can throw them off while you get in!"

Race cracked a grin, still peaked from his earlier brush with death. "Its true, its why we don't really bother with the whole leader business. We all know that ain't none of us gonna listen anyways!" He and Mush shook hands, while all of the Brooklynites looked guiltily towards Marta.

She bristled, her eyes blazing at their insubordination. Her jaw was set and squared and her lips pressed into a thin, pale line, but Trout grabbed her hand, slipping a scrap of paper in it. _Let us help. You're not alone this time._ She stared at the handwriting, the last words knocking the wind out of her every time her eyes fell on them. She lifter her gaze to his face, her eyes defensive, scared and trying to hold back tears of shame. That secret was supposed to die with Scatter. _I know,_ he signed, his eyes sad and apologetic. He wasn't supposed to know! She looked warily at the other boys and back to him, but he shook his head, only the two of them knew. Only the two of them would know if he had anything to say about it. _Please,_ he signed and she drew in a shaking breath, swallowing back the bile that was rising in her throat and burning the back of her tongue.

Her voice was hoarse and tight when she spoke, "If we all make it out of this, you seven are in for a good soaking."

Nips grinned, "You got it, Kiss, now whats the plan?"

She spread Trout's diagram out on the rooftop and they all crouched around it while she gave them their jobs and their places. "The only thing we don't have is our diversion and our way in," she mused once they were all clear on their jobs once they did get it. "Where he's placed his boys shows that he knows Spot and I and how we operate well. He expects us to try to take the fire escapes or use our numbers to storm the front door. I'd bet the first two floors are crawling with Dockside boys, maybe even some borrowed thugs from other allied gangs. He's expecting us, but he thinks he's covered our only ways to get in."

"So we need onto the roof," Nips continued, pointing out how the building to the left was close enough to building hop. "Stack, is there access to building once we're on the roof, or does that put us back at the fire escape?"

Haystack thought for a moment before his face lit up, "If the building weren't condemned, it would be a problem. The roofs rotten, full of unofficial access points. I heard the guys say that they were glad they didn't get chosen for roof duty because they didn't want to be the one who fell through. So now you just gotta get onto the roof without the guard telling the other Dockside guys, and make a controlled entrance into the building. I'm pretty sure we'd be boned if you all fell through the roof onto the lower floor."

Trout looked over to Race with his bright eyes glowing mischievously. "What?" Race asked. Trout nodded his head to Mush, and Race stared blankly at his curly haired friend for a moment before a similar grin spread over his face. "You brilliant bastard, Trout, its perfect!"

Mush seemed to catch on to what they were hinting at and began shaking his head vehemently. "Nuh-uh, no way Race. I ain't doing that again. I got locked up for two weeks!"

"Keep ya shirt on, none of the GANG MEMBERS is gonna call da bulls on you and Trout's right, its a perfect diversion!"

"Care to enlighten the rest of us, Higgins?" Marta asked boredly, mocking him with his own words.

He grinned, "So me and Mush, Blink, Jack, Trout and Spot is all at this dance and Blink and me is flirting with these girls, beautiful girls, my gal was a redhead with these green eyes and Blink's had dark hair, big brown eyes, skin so perfect and pretty that…" Trout rolled his eyes as Race's glazed over and went hazy and he smacked his friend in the gut to pull I'm out of his hormone hazed memory. "Right! Right, so Blink says something to this dame and she starts screaming and slapping and pushes Blink into this big ass, drunk guy…"

"The abbreviated version, Racetrack or Spot will be either dead or fully initiated into Dockside before you manage to make a point," Marta pressed, her patience with him running dangerously thin.

"Long story short, we was surrounded and then Mush jumps up on the bar, yanks his pants down and slaps his own ass. All those Bozos was so shocked at Mushy's brown ass hanging out for the world to see that we was able to get outta there."

"Yeah," Mush deadpanned, "it was really great going to the refuge for two weeks for you guys so you could flirt with a girl just to never talk to her again."

"How does this help us?" Marta asked, she was irritated now. They were wasting precious moments on this asinine story.

"Mush is gonna bare his cheeks again and Red, Mook and Lonny will knock him out with marbles from their slingshots while he's busy staring," Race answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Mush's ass is your genius plan?"

"You got something better, Sweetheart?" No one missed the flinch as he realized how close his big mouth was getting him to seeing what her trademark left jab felt like.

He was saved by Mush's quiet voice. "Why don't you just shoot pebbles to bring the guy to the edge, then bean him with a marble while Trout jumps over. He can knock the guy out while the others jump," Mush suggested. "My ass never sees any action, just the way I like it."

"Thank you, Mush, for coming up with a plan that isn't completely moronic. Lets hope the the goon on the roof is as stupid as Racetrack so we can get past him easily." Marta rolled her eyes and began giving orders to her shooters.

Trout looked at Race, grinning triumphantly and signed _She likes you._

Race scowled and gave Trout a shove while he blushed a deep fuchsia, "Shut up, Trout, it was your idea first." Trout stifled a laugh at his pouting friends expense.

With their plans made and everyone clear on what their job was once they reached the building, they climbed down the ladder. Marta and Trout held back until they were the last ones on the roof. "You know that plan was absolutely idiotic, right?" she asked wondering why he would feed the memory to Race and let him propose it as his own idea. He answered her with a wicked grin that she returned wryly as realization dawned on her. "But it made Race smile and got him back for giving you the cold shoulder for the past few days all at the same time?"

 _Two birds,_ Trout signed. She paused again, studying him, seeing how much straighter he stood these past few days, how often he smiled, how he signed more frequently and without looking down when he did it. There was a confidence about him that never was there before unless he was at Spot's flank. It was all his own.

"Did you know we'd end up doing what Mush said?" He quirked an eyebrow at her and smirked and she could almost hear his voice, full and clear, thinking _Wouldn't you like to know?_ "Spot and I have rubbed off on you over the years, kid. You're an evil genius in disguise."

He chuckled and started down the ladder so that they could follow Haystack to the decaying tenement building. They swiftly made their way through the streets, using every shortcut they knew, and climbed up to the roof of the building next to the one crawling with big, greasy, and non-too-pleased looking Dockside gang members. They slithered across the rooftop on their bellies, discarding their coats and hats in a corner. The cold air prickled their skin, but they were kept warm by the anticipation boiling in their guts. On the other neighboring rooftop Red, Lonny and Mook were doing the same, finding the best places to line up their shots. Haystack and the extra Manhattanites were with Marta and her crew, but would wait on the roof for a call for help. Marta raised her hands to her mouth, cupped like she held something between them, and blew between her thumbs. An airy, sad, mourning dove call came out, signaling to the shooters that they were ready. Trout crouched, ready to run and make the leap. "Tuck and roll, buddy," Race said, patting him on the back.

They heard the pebbles skip across the roof, and the heavy footfalls of the guard moving away from them. As soon as he heard the " _oof!"_ of the marble hitting its mark, Trout took off running, easily breaching the gap and rolling over his shoulder and somersaulting to his feet on the other side. The guard was up and holding his eye while blood oozed out between his fingers, but Trout didn't hesitate to sink a punch into his gut or shove his knee into his forehead, knocking him out. He stayed low and waited, listening carefully for any sign that the guys posted lower on the fire escapes heard the scuffle. Another bird call signaled the all clear for him and he made his way slowly back towards them, feeling how spongey and week the roof was under his hands and knees. There was a spot that seemed firm right where he landed and he waved them over.

"You first, Kiss," Nips whispered, patting her gently on the back. She ran and leapt over but wasn't quick enough with her tuck, landing one one foot like a dancer. The roof swallowed her leg down to her knee and she swallowed back the cry that threatened to force its way up her throat. She sat down as Trout rushed to her side, digging his hand into the wet wood to break it away and pulling her out of the hole by her armpits.

 _I'm sorry!_ he signed.

"Its not your fault that I didn't tuck and roll, Trout," she grunted as Race and Nips made their way over, each managing to lighten their landing enough to not meet her same fate. Trout gave her a withering look as she smiled, trying to convince him that it wasn't his fault that she managed to find a weak spot he missed. He pulled his outer shirt off as they inspected the deep gashes in her leg before wrapping the shirt around it and tying it tightly. Nips crawled around until he found a hole big enough for them to drop down into the building though.

"The floor below is rotten too, so we'll have to swing over to the dry part, but its our best bet," he said as they joined him. "Let's get in quick before anyone else falls through. I don't trust this shithole to hold all four of us at once for long. As if the building was agreeing with him, the wet boards underneath them gave a threatening groan.

"Throw me first," Race whispered. "I'm littler than you two and then I can help Kiss down." They lowered him down through the hole and swung him over onto the dry, less rotten part of the tenth floor below. Then they lowered Marta down by her arms and did the same. Race grabbed her waist and softened her landing. Nips and Trout laid a board over the hole and each lowered themselves onto it like a trapeze bar before swinging down next to the others. They breathed a sigh of relief; they were in. After a quick check of the stairs they made their way down the two stories and watched Rudy pace the long hallway from behind silently. The corridor was dark and dank despite the bright sunlight out the window at the end of the hall, but it smelled of decay and mildew. The walls were yellowed with age and tobacco smoke. Marta shivered as she thought about what Mick could come up with using this place as a starting point. She could hear the grunts and faint smacks of skin hitting skin and wondered which apartment Spot was in, whether he would still be himself when he came out of that next door, or whether he would be an empty vessel for Mick to abuse as he pleased.

 _A/N: I had fun berating Racetrack and letting the boys be average seventeen year old boys, being dumbasses at inappropriate times. The girls in Race's grand idea are a nod to my friend_ _ **Joker is Poker with a J**_ _, and are the girls that Blink and Race eventually fall for in her Benjamin Hotel series (which you should check out and review and favorite if you haven't already! As well as reviewing and following here! Writers like reviews...really we do. Don't make me beg, it wont be pretty) Thank you to Joker and livelearnlovesing for your reviews. since I haven't said thank you in a few chapters! Next time, we check in on Spot in the apartment brawls and see how he's doing, if you're curious about what Marta and Trout mean that they've seen him in the state that Mick is putting him in, where he's kinda crazy, check out my companion piece_ _ **Spitshakes and Slingshots**_ _. The info is all there for you and more will come...especially now that I actually have a plot for that story and am not just using it as an excuse to write happy Kisser and Scat scenes while I mourned Scat's passing._


	22. Chapter 22

There was kerosene running through Spot's veins and Mick's words dropped a lit match on him. It burned him and everything he knew about himself from the inside out until he was unrecognizable. He couldn't see clearly, couldn't think beyond the guttural roars ripping through his conscience about betrayal and sex and lies and promises. He entered apartment 8A and slammed the door behind him, the hollow echo reverberating in his chest, filling some of the empty space where his other feelings used to reside. Niko was ready for him, already rushing him like a bull.

The Greek was nearly double his weight and had two to three inches in height over him. He hit like a train at full speed, but Spot relished the impact. It jarred oxygen back into his body, fueling the fire that Mick and Darcy set. He needed it. He needed bloody knuckles and broken bones, jabbing elbows and slamming knees. Every hit he took, every stab of pain and flash of light behind his eyes made him feel more alive and muffled the racing thoughts that he didn't want to think. He needed impact to drown out the sound of his mother screaming and the smell of lilacs, the look on Marta's face while Mick touched her….any pause in the hits given and received and one of those thoughts squeezed its way through and he was seeing red all over again. He fought for the sake of fighting, not caring that he needed to conserve energy for the eleven other fights he was supposed to win. It wasn't about winning anymore. It was about power and anger and betrayal, it was about how he needed to hurt. He needed the pain of others to keep him going. Niko was getting tired and desperate, though and when the opportunity presented itself, the beast in Spot's clothes put him out of his misery.

The only move Niko really had that was worth anything was the tackle that took Spot out on the street. He knew it, everyone in Dockside knew it. He backed up and started running, and Spot watched him closely as he ran at him. It was like a game of chicken, except that Niko wasn't going to stop until he hit something and Spot knew it. He stood still, watching Niko advance on him, jumping back but leaving his foot out at the last possible moment. Niko went headlong onto the wall and didn't get up. His dark eyes open but unseeing. Spot stared at him, waiting for him to get up, moan, blink, anything, but the Greek just laid still and stared blankly at the ceiling. He wasn't ready for it to be over. He needed more. A beastial roar ripped out of him before he spat in that unseeing face and slammed the door open, not even casting Rudy a glance as he passed from 8A to 8B. "Clear!" Rudy bellowed so that Mick would hear him.

In 8B, a guy nearly his own age sat on a wooden barrel pulled up to a discarded crate and artfully shuffled a deck of playing cards. If he weren't out of his mind with rage, Spot might have recognized Chapman as a bookie that Race dealt with from time to time, or as a kid who ran a shell game in the marketplace when he was younger, but Spot could barely see his face. He saw a target; a target that needed to be destroyed. The bookie barely put up a fight. He stepped away from his makeshift table and tucked his cards into his pocket and stood there, letting Spot's blows rain down on him until he lost consciousness. He barely even blocked. The less he fought back the more angry Spot got. Didn't this guy understand that he needed a fight, not a punching bag? He gave an angry kick to the groaning lump of a person and barreled out of the room and back into the hallway. "Clear!" Rudy shouted again.

He barged into 8C, again enjoying the echo through his ribcage of the wooden door banging hollowly against the plaster walls. "Long time no see, Conlon," a rough voice greeted, cutting through the fog. He hadn't seen Trots in almost four years. He was bigger than Spot remembered with had a scar that ran down from his temple to his cheek that wasn't there when he was a newsie. His brown hair was slicked back and his brown eyes glared cooly at Spot. "I can't believe you chose this, Kid. Mick knew you would, but I thought you'd be smarter than that, see the benefit of coming quietly. You could be great here, the leader you were always supposed to be, the one Kiss trained you to be." He said her name and the image came back, beautiful Kisser offering herself over to Mick and Spot snapped.

"Don't talk about her like you know her!" he yelled as he lashed out and attacked shoving Trots as hard as he could. "No one knows her!" The hits came hard and fast, punctuated by his yelling. He blocked an uppercut and dug an elbow in between Trots' ribs. "She lied!" Trots slammed him against the wall and Spot slammed his forehead into his nose. "They all lie!" Trots was starting to look afraid. Spot wasn't known for being soft and cuddly, but the person he was stuck in this room with was barely human. He always admired the fact that Spot never backed down from anything, that he was fearless and ferocious, but this was different. He could see in Spot's cold silvery eyes that the person in front of him would break his neck without a smidge of remorse. "You sold me out!" Trots stumbled and slide across the rotting floorboards and Spot kept coming at him. In a moment of desperation, Trots pulled a knife from his boot and held it out to keep the blue eyed animal away from him just long enough that he could breathe. But as little regard as Spot had for anyone else's life, he didn't really care about his own either. The knife didn't scare him, didn't slow him down or stall him in the slightest. "You let him do this to me!" He jumped on top of Trots and didn't relent.

"Spot! You know me! I didn't do this, Mick did! You did! You agreed to it! Get off of me!" The knife skidded across the floor and the two young men grappled on the floor, one trying to kill the other, the other just trying to get back up off of the floor. They rolled and tumbled, punched and kicked. The cold touch of the blade, flat under the skin of his arm caught Trots' attention and he grabbed it and flung it out, the tip dragging across the smooth skin of Spot's forehead, down onto his cheek, narrowly missing his eye. The cold flash of pain pulled a hiss from Spot's lips, but didn't slow him. He could barely see through the blood dripping off his brow, but he managed to wrench the knife out of his old leader's hand before bashing his head into the floor until he stopped fighting. He hastily wiped the blood from his eye as if it was nothing more than sweat and exited the apartment.

Maybe it was the shock from the cut on his head, maybe it was the fatigue from the other three fights catching up to him, but the fight in 8D seemed to be over before it was even begun. The puny kid wasn't any older than him. The loss of blood made his head spin and he found himself thinking that Mick really did need him if these punks were all he had on hand willing to take him on. Trout and Nips, Red, Mook, any of them could handle this easily. He put his hand to his forehead as he passed back out into the hallway, his skin slick with blood. Rudy stopped him, yanking his head back to get a better look and hushed his snarl with a sharp glare. "That needs to be stitched and bandaged," he muttered.

"Fuck it." Spot growled. "I'm dead anyway." He ran his soaked sleeve over his face again and turned the handle of apartment 8F. An older guy with greasy, pomade slicked hair stood and looked at him boredly. This was just a job for him, just another day of duty to Mick. Spot closed the door as the sound of a woman screaming shattered the silence in the corridor, sending zings of electricity down his spine. This time it was real, not just an echo of another time in his head. The monster he could feel himself becoming relished them, hoped it was Darcy and that Mick was giving her exactly what she deserved. But Spot, the person Kisser raised, cringed. The conflict in his head and the blood burning his eye and pooling in the curve of his lip distracted him and let Lou get a hit in on him. Finally the adrenaline was running out, the rage was letting go and his body felt tired. A shuffle outside the door caught his attention and a woman slipped in the door. Her dress was well made but low cut and her soft brown hair was piled up in a messy pompadour on top of her head. "Back off Lou," she growled in a voice ripe with distaste and street drawl as she advanced on him, walking with a heavy limp, using a ornate cane to aid her. "Can't you see the kid is cut?"

The oily man sneered. "This ain't your fight, whore. Get back to your apartment. Its a fight to the death; he's supposed to be bleeding."

She took the cane in both hands, separating the gilded head from the shaft to reveal a beautiful dagger. Spot, still crouching on the floor, watched the events unfold, trying to decipher them. "I rank higher than you, ya spineless, mangy old dog." With that, she jammed the knife into his neck and shoved him to the ground. Spot watched him bleed with wide eyes. He'd seen many things in his young life, things that no human should have to see, but he'd never seen blood leave another person like that, not that fast, like it was being pumped out of a faucet. He scrambled to his feet, but kept low and ready, staring at her bum leg, hoping to take it out should she come after him. She calmly wiped her blade on her petty coat and put it back in its sheath in the shaft of her cane before looking his way and smiling in a worn way. "So you're Kisser's boy, the crown prince. I've waited a long time to meet you, after listening to Kisser and Ted talk like you all but hung the moon." She waited for him to react, but he didn't. His muscled body was tightly coiled, ready to pounce the moment she made a wrong move. "She sent me to help," her voice was soft and soothing, as if she suddenly realized that she was closed in a room with a wild animal. "She's here, just down the hall in apartment G, but you have to finish here first. I convinced Rudy to let me in here because neither of us trusted Lou." The screaming continued, and it started to grate on him, making him feel like he had to get out of his own skin. It was horrible. "Don't listen to that Spot. That's just Mick playing games with you, just like he has been for the past few weeks, torturing that poor girl in front of you. Youse getting too close and he's trying to get you back under control. Don't let him into your head. You have to get past Rudy and Mick, and then you can go home. Your friends cleared the apartments between here and Rudy." She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and held it out to him. "But you can't bleed to death before you get there."

"Why should I listen to you, huh?" he yelled, swatting her hand away. "Youse in Mick's pocket, same as Darcy! I thought she was on my side too, but she was feeding Mick dirt on me the whole time! She ain't no poor girl! She's a lying, two faced snake!"

"Darcy is on no one's side. She is a victim here and you know it. You've seen what he does to her, and he's been doing that for five years. There is nothing left of who she was. She don't know where he ends and she begins. She's served her purpose now, and she's losing her cushy place at the house in the morning. Mick had me get her a room ready this morning."

"I don't believe you!" he growled. "Darcy's not the victim and Marta's not here! She's not!" Suddenly that energy, that rage was in control again and he rushed her, tackling her to the floor and pinning her there. He pulled Trots' knife from his boot and held it to her throat while blood from Lou soaked into his pants and her hair from the floor and drops feel from his brow onto her unflinching face. She stared back up at him so knowing and serene that it gave him a moment of pause. There was nothing he could do that would scare, surprise or intimidate her. Mick had already done it all.

"This is exactly how Mick had her at her gauntlet at the Fox's Lair." She spoke despite the blade pressed to her skin, not flinching in the slightest as the contraction of her muscles dug the edge into her flesh, leaving small cuts and knicks. Her blood and his mixed with the puddle they sat in. The smell was heavy and hot, metallic. It filled his mouth and nose as he breathed, making his stomach do uneasy sommersaults. "He half choked the life out of her, and then pinned her to the floor, just like you've got me. You could step into those boots so quickly and easily kid; he's right about that. You've got what it takes to be his perfect heir. The question is: do you have what it takes to fight that? Do you have it in you to fight that part of you like she did? He wanted her from the first time he saw her bossing Ted around in the streets. They way she had all of your attention, the way she wielded that power so that most didn't even know that she had it, but would die for her just the same. He loved the way she mouthed off and never once let any of you boys get the boost on her. He couldn't help himself; he loves power too much to not go after someone who weirds it so naturally as she does. But as much as he loves it, he loves to squelch it even more. She would have been great as his right hand if he didn't get so greedy. If he had offered it to her the way he did to you, she might have taken it, but he promised to break her instead and she refused to let him. Are you going to just give in so easily and let him crack and mold you into a twisted version of himself? That doesn't sound like the man Kisser thinks you are."

"I ain't like him," he snarled.

"Then who are you like? Because right now you look like him. You don't look anything like the girl I met. The girl who never fought for herself, but for her family. The girl who danced through the streets of Brooklyn until the day she met these punks."

His grip loosened. He didn't let her go, but he gave her jugular and extra quarter of an inch of space away from the knife and moved his knees from her wrists, shifting to more gently pin her arms with his shins. "What did you say?"

"Niko dragged her in, holding her so tight that she had bruises before the fights even started, but the way she walked in," She sighed, like a woman who got a glimpse of true opulence, "She moved like she owned everything already, like this hellhole of a town was a playground just for her. She danced while she sold her papers until her night with Mick." He grimaced at her wording. He still wasn't ready to think about that. "She was never the same, the freedom, the light that shined from the girl that I saw dragged into the Fox that night was put out. When she broke Rudy's leg, she took that hard. I watched her heart break when she realized that she used his kindness against him, but when Mick started touching her…I watched her light go out. They were right at my feet, but there wasn't anything I could do that would actually help her. Mick holds all of us here, we all have something to lose by crossing him."

"Did she offer herself…her body to him for us?" Whatever Mick did to him, the spell it cast was breaking. He always said that Kiss couldn't hide what she felt and thought, it was written clearly across her face. This woman saw her face at those moments. She saw Marta and was telling the truth. But he thought Darcy was telling the truth too. He didn't trust himself, his own ability to read people. Darcy ruined every perception he had of himself.

She chuckled a throaty chuckle. "Is that what he's telling himself these days? No. Didn't anyone tell you not to trust him? He will say anything he has to to make you feel what he wants you to feel." He cringed inside as he remembered Darcy saying that to him. She tried to warn him, in her own way. She knew what was coming. "Mick and Niko both tried to take her, but she didn't offer it willingly. Her rules were different than yours. Youse supposed to fight until one of you don't get back up, her rules were anything goes, just make her beg for mercy. Mick made it that way, knowing what he could get away with. But her and me, we got him good. She saw how distracted he gets when he's got a beautiful woman in his arms, how obsessed he gets with things and she used it to her advantage. Yes, she played along with his touching for a moment or two, but only so that she could buy herself a few minutes. He didn't…she won before he could get that far."

The door swung open and slammed against the wall. Mick stood, staring both down at them with clenched fists. "I thought we had an understanding after the last time, Clarice. I thought you were smart enough to learn your lesson and not double cross me again," Mick's voice said from the door. Spot scowled up at him, but Mick's eyes didn't leave Clarice's. "Show him your little souvenir from the last time you decided to question your loyalty, Clarice," he ordered.

She suddenly, after all the time of being nonplussed through Spot's attack and tirade, looked pale and sick. She nudged the inside of his leg with hers and he slid off of her onto the floor, finally taking the care to put pressure on his cut head. She raised her skirt slowly, revealing a wooden calf coming out of her polished boot. "If a little kick to a whiskey bottle got you that lovely trophy, I wonder what I should come up with for killing Lou and giving the challenger a pep talk."

"The difference is," she croaked, shuffling her skirt back down, "that I don't have anything left to lose. You've already taken everything Mick. You can't keep me obedient anymore."

"Kill her, Spot."

"No."

"You've already gotten out of two rooms, you're not getting away without defeating her too," Mick snarled. "Kill her and move on to apartment H. You'd have to take her out in F anyway, do it NOW."

Spot raised up to his knees, "I ain't one of your goons and I ain't killing someone who helped me."

Mick smiled and Spot's brain back pedaled over the information that Mick just gave him. He was in 8E, but Mick said he'd gotten out of two rooms. He got out of killing Lou, because Clarice did it for him, but what other room did he get out of? "Kill her Spot, or I kill Kisser." Rudy came in behind him holding a bound and gagged Marta. Her eyes were wild and her leg bloodied and bandaged with a very familiar light blue shirt. She fought against Rudy with every ounce of strength in her.

Spot swallowed hard, his throat dry and sticky as he looked down at Clarice, pleading her with his eyes to do something, to somehow help him get out of this. "Its ok," she whispered. "My life hasn't been worth anything for years. The only good thing I ever did was help you two. Put me out of my misery and save her. You're saving me form living for another minute under him." He shook his head. He was many things but a killer wasn't one of them. "My only way out is right here," she murmured, wrapping her hand over his on the bone handle. Her grip tightened, and plunged the blade into her own ribs, dragging his hand along for the ride. Marta shrieked and tried to bolt forward, but Rudy held her tight. Clarice smiled up at him. "Thank you," she grunted, before turning a cold glare up to Mick. "There, he's done it. Now send him on to 8H you sick bastard. He's going to take you down. I know he can and you do too. Get out of here and let me die without looking at your face, I'll have plenty of time with the devil in hell." She grabbed Spot's pant leg and gave a sputtering cough. "Burn him to the fucking ground, kid. Take Darcy and run."

 _A/N: Sorry for the cliffhanger, but this just couldn't all be one chapter._ _More to come, but not tonight or tomorrow, I'm exhausted! Shout out to livelearnlovesing for her review last chapter! And to Joker for letting me whine and giving me good fight music to listen to! Please read and review! We're almost done here! I'm not going to estimate a number of chapters, but we are definitely coming to a close!_


	23. Chapter 23

Apartment 8H was as dim and dirty as the rest of the tenement. The window at the back of the main room had a crack like a spiderweb through it. The man passed out on the floor looked like he wouldn't have made much of an opponent for Spot and Trout couldn't help but smile to himself thinking about Clarice's wicked smile as she told them that they needed to tie up the men in the apartments between hers and Rudy's because she had offered them a pre-fight drink. "Some people just can't hold their opium," she joked. From the smell of the skinny, stringy haired man drooling on the carpeting, the dram of laced whiskey wasn't his first that day.

Trout had his wrists bound tightly behind his back when Nips came sauntering out of the single bedroom in the apartment. A yelp slipped out of Trout as Nips slapped him on the back. "I was thinking," he said, ignoring Trout's shock, "that wese should probably rough these bummers up a bit in case Mick checks them after Spot clears a room." Trout stared at him, the question clear on his face. The big blonde grinned goofily, "It seems that Mick didn't want Spot getting past this apartment, since they busted out the wall between the bedroom of this one and mine. They were going to gang up on him here. I guess thats why Clarice wanted us here. Race found a hole and was trying to bust it out enough to get over to us." Trout heard the soft scraping from 8I of Race working to make the hole big enough for them to crawl through. "I better go check on him sos he don't get himself stuck in the wall." Once he was gone, Trout looked back at the greasy Docksider before shrugging to himself and giving the man a hearty kick to the ribs and a hefty punch to the face. He finished tying him up and dragged him back to the bedroom. Out in the hall, there was a shriek and then the door handle rattled.

The door opened and Trout hardly recognized the person who stumbled in. Between the blood pouring down his face and the blank look in his silver eyes there was almost no way to tell that he was Spot Conlon. He had that mask that he liked to morph his face into to cover his emotions, but this was like looking into the eyes of a dead person. He shut the door with a backwards kick of his foot and just stood trying to mop up the blood out of his eye with the sleeve of his shirt. He swayed on his feet, muttering "She said she was going to help me." He looked right at Trout, but obviously didn't see him. "Never saw blood like that."

Trout stepped forward and a creak in the floorboard snapped Spot to attention. The empty look was gone and the one that replaced it made Trout's blood freeze in his veins. He knew that look. It wasn't the first time he'd been sent in to deal with him when he was like this. This Spot made Kisser cry and made Noakes, the old house manager when they were kids, believe in the devil. This Spot fed the reputation, made people nervous. He couldn't cover what was going on in his head, the confusion and anger and sadness were plain on his face. "S-S-Spot," Trout said quietly.

"Oh, youse gonna talk now?" Spot taunted, smearing the blood on his face with the sodden sleeve of his shirt. "You gonna be someone different than you always was too?" Trout couldn't reply besides throwing him an incredulous look and took another tentative step forward. "Don't you fucking touch me, ya goddamn retard. You ain't here to help me!" In any other situation at any other moment of his life, Trout's fists would already be flying. He had soaked people for lesser tags like crazy, idiot and dummy, but this time he just took a slow breath in, rolled his shoulders and glared at Spot. He could see that the fight, the fit, the crazed state that Mick had been pushing him towards was still in control and that Spot was goading him to fill whatever hole was inside of him with pain, because pain was better than the emptiness he felt when he was like this. He turned his back on Spot, hoping this stupid move wasn't his last. "You stupid son of a bitch! Hit me!" Spot yelled. "Fight me you goddamn coward!"

"No."

Spot pushed him from behind. "Come on!" he sounded desperate as the choke in his voice grew audible. Trout's unwillingness allowed him to think more. "God damnit, Trout, hit me," his voice broke. Trout pursed his lips and started whistling "All Through the Night," the lullaby that Kisser used to sing in the bunk room when they were boys. For a moment Spot didn't move and Trout turned slowly to watch over his shoulder. It was like every joint in Spot's body sagged and relaxed for a minute. The blank stare returned but then the agitated version pushed back through and he jumped back to attention. "I ain't seven! And you ain't her! You can't just sing me to sleep!"

Trout sighed, it was a shot in the dark. It worked once before, but that was the way with Spot, he was unpredictable at best. Trout knew the plan, he knew what Clarice told him to do when she met with them. He'd practiced the words for hours with Marta and Race. "Fight you," he said. "F-fight Mick."

"I ain't like Mick!" he roared and attacked his best friend with a fervor and ferocity like Trout had never seen. Trout and Spot hadn't fought each other since they were seven, but after years of watching each other's backs, play scuffles and fighting side by side in brawls they were intimately aware of each other's style, strengths and weaknesses. Trout fought with raw strength and a lifetime of pent up anger. His hits were hard and and came in spurts so that his opponent was still recovering from a hit while two more were raining down on them. Spot was swift and, despite being thin, hit hard, his bones drilling deep into his opponents flesh like dulled knives. Normally, he was calculating and watchful, but this time, he was wild, throwing his fists and elbows as hard and fast as he could. Trout could hardly keep up. As his fists flew, his mouth ran, pouring out the things that were making his mind race. "You ain't Kisser! Marta ain't even Kisser!" Trout pushed him away, trying to block as much as he could. "Kisser's dead! She died that night at the Fox's Lair and we was all too stupid to see it! That fraud that Mick's got is just an empty shell that looks like her!"

That stopped Trout in his tracks and gave Spot a momentary advantage. He drove Trout back and slammed him into the window with the spiderweb crack. His thick skull hit the glass and stars lit up behind his eyelids. With the second slam, the already compromised glass gave way. Spot kept pushing and Trout only saved himself from an eight story fall by hooking his knees on the window frame. Spot wrapped his hand in Trout's suspender strap and stared down at him, emotionless and empty. He grabbed onto Spot's narrow wrist, "Up!" he grunted. When Spot didn't move, just stared, looking through him instead of at him he yelled, "Spot! Up!" in a panic. He couldn't yell for Nips for fear of bringing Mick's attention to their presence. He clawed at Spot's arm, desperate to bring him back. "Spot! Fight!" Spot's eyes refocused just a bit, but instead of pulling his oldest friend to safety, he started laughing. Trout could feel the button holding his suspenders to his pants start to give. Coming from a kid who normally didn't laugh beyond a snort or snicker at someone else's expense, the loud laughter was terrifying, as terrifying as the drop that Trout could feel was going to end him. There was glass digging into the backs of his legs, but that pain hardly even registered. He heard the pop of his button, but was yanked forward at the same moment. Nips threw Spot to the floor and steadied Trout on his feet.

Spot clamored back to standing, still laughing hysterically and Trout couldn't take it. He pulled his fist back and drove it deep into Spot's stomach, hoping the lack of air would stop the maniacal laughter. While Spot was still doubled over, gasping for breath, Trout let fly another sledge hammer blow to Spot's temple that knocked the smaller boy to the ground. He lay on the floor groaning for a minute while Nips grabbed hold of Trout's arm. Spot sat up and pressed his hand to his head. "Nips," he groaned, "be a pal and lend me your shirt. Mine's fucking wet and I'm starting to think it ain't so lucky since this is the third time I've ended up bleeding and locked up wearing it." He unbuttoned his navy blue shirt, his favorite shirt that was new to him the night of the strike rally, that he always thought looked so smart, and pressed the only dry place he could find on it to his forehead.

"That really you, Spot? Because I ain't giving the guy who just held my buddy out of a window a goddamned thing."

"Yeah," he answered quietly. "It's me. I can't promise I won't do shit like that again, but for now its me. This place…and Mick. They's messing with my head. Trout," he mumbled, resting his aching head on his palm, "Do that thing you was doing before." Still seething, still wanting answers for what Spot meant about Marta, Trout glared back at him and slammed his fist into his other palm. "Not that, before that, the whistling thing. I fucking hate it, but it clears my head." He shot Trout a look that seemed sharp and pointed, but Trout could see the plea in it. He growled in the back of his throat and flipped Spot off as he limped away. There was blood wetting his socks and pooling in the heels of his boots. "Trout," Spot called, his voice thick and rough. Trout whirled around pointing at the window accusingly. "Yeah, I know, but I pulled you back up."

"Laughing like a looney," Nips muttered under his breath. Trout pointed at Nips to say 'what he said.' Then the hurt over being called not only stupid, but retarded took over and he glowered at his friend. They never glorified those words with hand gestures. They never talked about them, it was just an unspoken rule that no one called Trout crazy or stupid unless they wanted to see the business end of his fist and eventually end up dealing with Spot. "Oh shit, Spot, you didn't really, didja?" Nips asked, recognizing that particular look on Trout's face. Spot looked at the floor and Nips whistled long and low as he unbuttoned his shirt. "I'ma go check on Race, you two get yourselves sorted."

"How the hell did you get in here anyway, why's Race here?" Spot asked.

"To help, of course! He's still trying to break up the wall between I and J. They had an ambush planned for you here, Spot. You got too close, Mick must be nervous." Nips left and Trout limped over to the broken window and rested his head against the frame.

"Shit, youse bleeding, Trout," Spot said.

"Uh-huh," he answered.

"Geez, I leave for two weeks and you turn into a chatterbox." Trout flipped him off again over his shoulder. "C'mere, lemme see your leg." He sighed and walked back over to where Spot sat on the floor looking drained. "Ain't much we can do about it now, but it needs bandaging." Trout pointed at Spot's face and gestured for him to hand him the shirt. He ripped off the sleeve off and wrapped it around Spot's head. "Trot's got spooked and pulled a knife on me," he said, answering the question that he knew Trout would ask if he could. Trout pulled a face at him and he snorted. "I know, you told me before. I'm fucking scary when…that happens." He paused and took a shaking breath, ripping off the other sleeve and tying it around Trout's thigh. "Trout," he said with a break in his voice. Trout looked down as Spot made Trout's gesture for 'I'm sorry.' In all of the times he'd been the one to pull Spot down out of the rafters, Spot never thanked him or apologized for the things he said. Trout nodded in thanks. They were silent as they bandaged what they could with what was left of Spot's shirt while Trout continued to go through what Spot screamed at him. "Whatcha got rolling around up there, Trout? Youse trying to figure something out."

'Where's Kisser?' he asked with hand signs.

"Mick has her. I dunno how. He don't know youse guys is here, right?" Trout yanked him to his feet and waved him through the bedroom and into 8J where Nips and Race had a 2' by 3' hole broken through the plaster.

"Everything ok, boys?" Nips asked, looking pointedly at Trout. He nodded, brushing away the concern.

"What's Kisser's plan?" Spot asked, his voice soft with exhaustion but still biting.

"Ain't you the plan man, Boss?" Nips asked.

Spot grimaced and shook his head. "Not this time. If it was good enough for her, then its good enough for me. She's counting on you to be where youse supposed to be, especially with Clarice gone."

"Where's Clarice?" Race asked through the hole in the wall.

"She gave herself up to save Marta," he answered firmly, letting them know that the subject was closed for discussion. "Now what's the plan. We gotta get outta this place."

"So far as we knew, we were here to help take down some of your fighters, and then make sure the rest of em don't get any wise ideas about rebuilding the ranks once we're gone. Clarice, then the three in these rooms, leaving you Rudy and Mick. Clarice swore up and down to Kiss that Rudy was with us. But if she's captured and Clarice is dead, I guess he double crossed them, poor broads." Nips' sandy eyebrows pinched together as he spoke.

Spot closed his eyes, "Ok, this plan might need some revisionating…but after we get Marta."

"No," Trout said, suddenly jittering as he understood what was going on. He paced and dug his hands into his black hair as he worked out all of the events of the day. "Oh shit!" He pulled out his paper and began scribbling furiously. _Rudy was always with Kiss. She said he let her win. Rudy is still with us, we still have a chance._

"He's right, if he double crossed Clarice he would have outed you three too. Clarice was part of the plan. Tell me what you know Trout." Spot half sat, half collapsed on the floor and leaned back against the wall while Trout went back to writing out everything he heard through the door about Marta's gauntlet. Spot read it with a nod and a sigh. "I hate this place. I let him make me think…."

"He's good at that. I warned you," Darcy's voice cut him off. "I warned you about everything as best I could." She stood in the doorway, her face newly bruised, her blouse gone, in just her lace trimmed chemise and her purple skirt. The skirt was ripped and rumpled and the delicate skin visible above the lace or her chemise was marred with deep, angry bite marks.

He glared up at her. "What are you doing here? Here to take more dirt to Mick?"

"Marta sent me to stitch up your face and give you boys new orders. She's on the roof getting the other's ready. I have to fix you up and go rally the boys loyal to my dad that are downstairs."

Spot looked warily to Trout. He didn't trust his judgement where she was concerned. In all honesty he wasn't sure whether he could trust his own eyes and ears at that moment. Trout furrowed his brow and signed "go on." She pulled a needle and thread and the flask of whiskey that Clarice had shown them when she told them about the thugs she drugged. Trout grabbed her arm before she could offer it to Spot. "Don't worry, the opium was in the glasses, not here. Otherwise she would have dosed herself too. She didn't do all this alone you know. Most of Dockside would give their left nut to get rid of Mick, they's just too chicken shit to actually do nothing about it." Darcy set to work stitching up Spot's face and told them what Marta needed from them.

 _A/N: Ok, this chapter is a little bit filler, but the boys couldn't be left to their own devices for very long, and Spot needed is buddies to get through the next chapter. Please note that all derogatory and not PC terms used by Spot Conlon are not terms that I condone...It killed me to write that word._

 _I'm stalling a bit because I'm not ready for it to end. But it will. 3 more chapters and an epilogue, all four of which are at least halfway done. The next one might be out later today, maybe tomorrow. Thanks for reading!_


	24. Clarice's Last Great Act

Clarice told the boys where to go, tilting her flask to and fro and sloshing the whiskey inside. "Some fellas just can't hold their opium," she said with a cheeky wink, as she watched them retreat down the stairs. The last door latched with a click before she steeled herself to face Marta who was fuming about the amount of planning that Clarice did without her.

"You told Rudy," she said in an angry monotone. Her hazel eyes were hard and full of mistrust.

Clarice sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and taking swig out of the flask. "This isn't just getting you out of the basement, Dollface. It's so much bigger than you, now. Rudy wants him dead, I want him burned until there's nothing left for the devil collect and most of the gang would turn and jump on him if they thought there was a snowball's chance in hell of making it out alive."

"All I want is my boys safe. For good." Marta wrapped her arms around her middle. "All I want is for this to be over." She realized as she sat drinking and planning with Clarice at the tavern in Manhattan, back when they thought this would be like her gauntlet and that getting Spot out of a few fights would help him out, how many years it had been since she lived without fear of Mick coming back for Spot or any of the boys, how long since she dreamed of anything for herself.

"And that can't happen unless he's dead and buried in such a spectacular way that none of his half-wit followers think its wise to pick where he left off. You can't do this alone. Trust me, trust me and Rudy."

"How can you expect me to trust you? You've hardly been forthcoming!" She stamped her foot like an angry child, forgetting herself and the precarious positions she was in at the moment.

Clarice's whole demeanor darkened and fifteen years of being around no one but thugs and hoodlums reared it's ugly head. She took a move from Marta;s own arsenal and stepped into her ally as she spoke, invading Marta's personal space and making her uncomfortable. "Because out of forty people in that basement that night, who helped you? Me and Rudy. Who calmed you down, talked to you, got you in the right mind to keep going? Me. Who lost a fucking leg for moving a bottle of whiskey a half of an inch? Me! If there is anyone in this world you can trust, Toots, its me. I didn't do none of this for my health and well being. I'm doing this because you are here and you are ready and you are the only person I've met since I've been around these assholes who has a glimmer of a chance of taking him down. But you can't do it alone. This ain't no little basement with a couple of horny bastards looking to rough up a little girl." She waited for the brunette to look back up and tapped her chin with her cane when she didn't. Marta glowered at her like a child, but she could see the beginnings of surrender there in those worried golden eyes. "Now, are you ready to listen and let me help my way or are you really so intent on doing your own thing, even if it means letting Mick strip your boy down until he is nothing but his demons? You're not going to like this, but Rudy and I know Mick better than you. This isn't going to work unless he thinks he's winning."

"What do you mean?" Marta asked warily as Clarice pulled out a length of rope from under her skirt. It was knotted in a figure eight and the loops of the eight could be tightened or made loose with a slip of the tail.

"We're capturing you and taking you to Mick."

"Real inspiring talk about trusting you, nice to know it was all bullshit."

"Not a bit of it was bullshit, Love, and you damn well know it. You are the key to all of this, the reason it will work. Because you are his weakness, and he can't see anything else when you're in a room." She placed her hand on Marta's elbow and looked her in the eye, her warm brown eyes pleading with the former newsgirl to give up some control and cooperate. "We're not not going to let anything happen to you." She slipped the bindings over Marta's wrists and tightened them, concealing the tail within the knot and tied a handkerchief around her mouth, assuring her it was clean before escorting her down the stairs and into Rudy's charge. Rudy and Clarice shared a long look that Marta didn't understand before Clarice handed Rudy her flask and slipped through the door of an apartment. He glanced her way once she was in, and though he tried to mask it, he couldn't hid e the worry in his watery green eyes. Marta could feel the sadness washing over him as he led her to apartment 8K and knocked on the door.

"Boss, I found this snooping around on the fourth floor and saw Clarice sneaking in with Lou and the kid as I came up the stairs." He managed to hide the waver in his voice, or Mick was too distracted by Marta's presence in the room to notice.

Mick looked her up and down, licking his lips as if she was a fine feast laid out for him with a satisfied smirk on his face. He was too much the same. His hair was streaked with a bit more silver and a few more wrinkles had formed at the corners of his eyes, but he still had the uncanny and infuriating ability to make her feel incredibly attracted to him even while she was disgusted by his presence on the planet. "Ted told me that the years did you good, Majesty," he teased and her skin bristled at the old nickname that she just couldn't shake. "He wasn't wrong, for once." He snapped his fingers and winked, "No time for fun now, I'm sad to say. Business to attend to. Lets go see what your old pal Clarice and your little pet Spotty are up to since it seems that she just cant leave well enough alone where you're concerned."

 _A/N: So, chapter 24 will be up tomorrow, and this little tidbit only sorta went with it, so call it a bonus chapter...a half chapter...call it whatever you want, it needed to be said to clarify facts and didn't really fit in anywhere else. So here it is, 1,000 little words to keep your appetites wet while I wrap things up with Mick and Marta._


	25. Chapter 25

Rudy shoved her away from the flat where Clarice lay dying and into his apartment, "Get a grip, Marta!" he hissed with a pointed glare and slammed the door behind her. She screamed against the gag in her mouth and threw her body against the door over and over until the shock and horror over what she saw was overtaken by overwhelming sadness and she slid down the door and buried her face in her upper arms, crying hysterically. Spot was broken inside, even more than he was before and there was no telling if he could be saved even if they got him out. Clarice, her closest ally in this, was dead. It was a tantrum that would rival that of most small children.

A metallic clank and a kick at her shoe pulled her attention out of the tempest of confusion in her head. The blonde girl in front of her had bruises on her face and a split lip. The telltale sign of being Mick's conquest covered her chest and Marta could still feel the ache of those bruises even after all the years since they faded. He liked to bite deep and hard, just to the safe side of breaking the skin and the ones on the girls alabaster skin were the same deep purple as her skirt. "You done throwing your little shit fit?" the girl asked in a voice that would be sweet if it weren't for the vein of bitterness that she long since stopped trying to hide. Her face was pointy and sharp, but not unpleasing. "I must say, I expected something a bit more impressive with the way everyone around here talks about you. I expected the Queen of Brooklyn…" Marta was off the ground with the bindings on her wrists pulled tightly against the tiny blonde's throat before she could utter a squeak of protest. She laughed hoarsely. "That's more like it. That looks more like the girl who is going to take Mick down. Now, lemme go so I can untie you." Marta hesitantly did as she was asked and the tiny blond loosened the ropes around her wrists and untied the handkerchief around her mouth.

"So, you're Darcy. The 'underwear girl' I've heard so much about." She said once she turned back around and took another look at the girl, she couldn't help the raise of her eyebrow.

Darcy's face only flushed for a moment before she twisted it into a haughty scowl. "I sure am, and you don't like Mick's little pet name for you."

"I sure don't," Marta mocked darkly, rubbing her wrists. "Never have, never will." She watched the little blonde carefully, unsure of whether of not to trust her. "Never thought Mick's personal mistress would be helping me take him down."

"You ever think to ask how he got his personal mistress?" Darcy asked icily.

Marta's hands raised to her hips, not liking this pipsqueak of a rat-faced girl sassing her. "I never thought to ask many things about Donovan Mickelson. I figured charming, beautiful and a few aces short of a deck covered him pretty well."

"Add manipulative and abusive in there are you've got him pretty well pegged," Darcy agreed, trying not to smile. She was actually almost pretty when she smiled, when all the weight of Mick's crimes against her lifted. "He stole me from my mother when my father tried to leave Dockside. If Pop tries to leave, Mick threatens to kill me and take one of my three little sisters to replace me with. If I do anything he don't like, he threatens to kill my father and put all of my sisters to work at the Fox. My pop and I want him gone, out of our lives for good." For such a tiny thing, she stood tall and seemed to grow a few inches when she spoke about her sisters.

"Three sisters, four little girls," Marta mused, absently pulling her braid over her shoulder. She met eyes with Darcy, "You're Rudy's daughter. You're the reason he let me win."

Darcy nodded resolutely, her lip pouting out bit as her jaw clenched. "I sure am, and I'm helping. You don't get to say no." Marta drew a sharp breath in at the statement, but Darcy paid her no mind and kept talking, rattling on nervously. "Spot thinks I'm a traitor…and maybe I am, but I did it for my sisters. I have to keep them away from Mick and I have to prove to Spot that I'm not what he thinks I am."

Marta sighed, she was no stranger to lovestruck little girls chasing after Spot. HIs arrogance and his power brought them knocking at the lodging house door in droves, but he wasn't much of one for friendships, let alone relationships, because that would mean he had to let them in, and he didn't let people outside of her, Trout and Nips in very often. "Good luck with that, Kid," she sighed. "Spot isn't much for second chances, but I am. So long as you and I want the same things, you're ok in my book."

"I want my sisters to not know the things that I do about men," she said in a shaking voice. "I don't ever want them to be afraid of being touched or wonder what they will tell their man if they ever fall in love." Her face hardened again even though tears shown in her eyes. "My sisters are not toys to be broken."

Marta stared deep in to her light, watercolor eyes, searching for any sign of a lie or betrayal before reaching out for the girl's hand, noticing the small flinch as their skin touched. "Good enough for me, Sweets." She noticed the gas can at Darcy's feet. "What's that for?"

"Dusk is falling; they can't fight in the dark. Mick has lamps in all of the apartments. So what's the plan, what do I do?"

"Plans, stupid fucking plans, what are we on here? Plan F? No, we're done with plans. Brooklyn's at its best flying by the seat of its pants, with the element of surprise…" Marta's eyes got big as the way out, the way out for all of them, came crashing into her head with resounding ferocity. "Oh, holy shit…Can you get more of that?"

"More kerosene? No, probably not. Its not like the others wouldn't notice me sending out for more lamp oil. No one's supposed to leave the building until Mick or my pop says so. What are you thinking?"

"You said it and Clarice said it. We're burning Dockside to the ground." She pulled her hair over her shoulder and fiddled with it as she worked out the details in her head. "I'll send some of my lookouts to the Fox and the brownstone, but we need someone to light the fire here and douse the place without getting caught by Mick's guys."

Darcy grinned. "Oh, I can root out some boys loyal to my dad willing to douse the place and drop a cigarette butt or two. I can also get the fire escape guard changed to guys that will make sure we get out."

"Go let let my boys know whats going on. Send Nips downstairs and have him put on the fire escape. He's good at looking like he belongs wherever he is. Send Racetrack to wait on the street for the rooftop boys. Lord knows, he can talk, maybe he can talk his way into getting us more lamp oil without paying for it. Keep Trout with Spot." She took a deep breath, thinking about the feral person she saw in that apartment, smeared with blood and dead eyed. "You be careful around him, he would attack me or Trout in the state he's in and he knows you wronged him. Only go near him if Trout lets you. Trout will keep Spot moving in the right direction until he settles out. Then get downstairs and rally the good apples, they need to keep the bad ones in line and drop the cigarette when Rudy calls the clear from the last of the boys apartments; when its Rudy's turn."

"Spot…is he?"

"No," Marta answered flatly. "He's so far from all right. Mick got to him so he's not…" She couldn't finish the sentence, because she didn't know how to explain it. He wasn't himself didn't even begin to explain what she saw in that flat. "And someone cut him, his face looks like a filleted mackerel."

Darcy ran to the corner to an old carpet bag and filled the pockets of her once fine purple skirt with a familiar flask, a spool of thread and a packet of needles. At Marta's questioning look, she blushed, "I'm not just Mick's girl," she said the word with disdain, "I'm also the one who puts the Dockside boys back together when they need it. Thats how I know everything. Boys don't change as they get older; when they fall and scrape their knees, they want a mama there to kiss their booboos. You give them a shot of whiskey and patch them up and they'll tell you just about anything." Marta couldn't help but be impressed. She watched as Darcy's haughty expression softened. "I know these boys better than anyone, and most of them are good guys, guys like your Ted, who for one stupid reason or another got stuck here. Once you get here, Mick don't let go so easy. They just want to be free."

She nodded and Darcy shot her a tight smile before tentatively opening the door and looking for Rudy. He waved them out. "Be quick, he's going to want to see you before Spot gets to me. He wants you properly subdued when the kid gets to my apartment, because he'll watch my fight…and you will too," he whispered as Darcy slipped into the door across the hall.

Marta's hackles were up, every hair on her neck and arms stood on end. "Oh, I'll show him what I look like 'properly subdued' all right," she growled and sprinted up the stairs until she was standing where she and the boys landed when they dropped in through the hole in the roof. She again put her cupped hands to her mouth and blew a mourning dove's call and waited for the thud of Haystack landing on the rooftop and crawling over to her. "Stack, I need you boys, all of you up here and any birds you can round up along the way, to gather kerosene and matches. I need some here, delivered to Nips, he'll be on the fire escape soon, and then some to the Fox and the Brownstone. We're having us a Dockside bonfire tonight, my friend" she whispered loudly, but with a grin. Stack grinned back at her. "Wait for the fire escape guard to change, then meet Racetrack in the alley. Split the boys up and take down those buildings, you got it?"

"Got it Kiss! I bet Mush's girl at the Fox will help us too!" She laughed under her breath at that, of course Mush found a girl. Haystack starts to head back to the edge, but came back suddenly, his young face worried. "How is he?"

"He'll be better the sooner we get him out of here. Focus on the mission Stack." He nodded and put on a face too business-like and grown for an eleven year old. He was so light that falling through the roof wasn't even a concern for him as he ran and easily made the hop to the other rooftop to spread the word. She booked it back down the stairs and into Rudy's apartment and got her shackles and gag put back in place to wait for her audience with Mick.

The second clear from Rudy made her heart sink and he opened the door. "It's time," he said quietly. She nodded and stood, waiting for the two people she least wanted to face enter the apartment.

Spot entered first. He looked tired, bowed and broken, but much more himself than the last time she saw him. He looked at her wearily and she was surprised to find herself looking up a bit to meet his eyes. _Look away_ , she signed, begging him not to watch what Mick would do to her. His brow furrowed and his head dipped lower. "Don't do this, Kisser," he said, his voice so low that it was little more than a vibration rumbling through the quiet room. She shrugged her shoulders, she had no choice. She had to keep Mick thinking he had her to use as leverage. "Marta, don't let him…" She covered his mouth with her hands and shook her head, but he shoved them away, that desperate look returning. "I ain't Scat, I don't need you to do this." She falteringly reached for him again and for once, he didn't duck away. He let her fingers brush down his cheek lightly. _Look away_ , she repeated and followed it with _I'm sorry_. He looked away from her, stewing in his head, but couldn't say anything else to her. Next door in Mick's apartment came the screams and thuds that both Spot and Rudy were heartbreakingly familiar with. Marta looked between the two men, their faces mirroring the feeling of shame and helplessness.

Finally Rudy pulled himself out of his thoughts, "Better get going on this, Kid. When he's done with…that, he'll expect us to be mid fight." Marta flew at him, slamming her hands into his face, screaming against the fabric in her mouth. She pushed his chest and plunked down on the floor, so angry that a man who would ensure the freedom of some orphan he'd never seen before but would allow that to go on under his nose for years. "There ya go, Spot, she gave ya a head start," she heard him say, his voice thin with defeat. She had to take her own advice and look away, she couldn't watch them fight. Instead she thought of Racetrack dropping off a gas can that he nicked from a nearby tenements superintendent's closet. And Mush gathering the girls from the upstairs rooms at the Fox and having them help him set the place on fire. She imagined, even though the girl's pathetic cries didn't let her believe it, that Darcy was helping Stack stake down the Brownstone where she'd been held for five years. She was invested enough in her daydreams that she didn't hear the screams stop and the door of the apartment slamming against the wall made her jump.

Mick looked Spot over with a magnanimous sneer, "You just get prettier every time I see you, Spot. I'm not sure which I prefer, the bloody wild animal or the hastily pieced together monster. What do you think, your Highness. Surely the Queen of Brooklyn has an opinion on the subject." She swiftly elbowed him in the gut tipping them both over the back of the crate they sat on. He easily flipped her underneath him and pinned her to the floor She glared at him and huffed, and he laughed at her heartily. "Oh, I do like you this way, I should have thought of silencing you ten years ago, perhaps we would have gotten on better, instead of being kept apart all this time." He waved to Rudy to get on with it. She closed her eyes, she couldn't let herself focus on the abusive affection being paid to her neck and shoulder, the biting, tearing, sucking and groaning just below her ear. His probing fingers and groping hands weren't any more gentle than his lips and she was glad for the gag because any squeak would take Spot's attention off of Rudy, and until they were ready to book, he had to focus on the fight. But one bite went past her threshold to contain, she felt the tickle of blood ooze down her neck and let out a yelp. Spot was off of Rudy and onto Mick in a heart beat. Mick was ready though, it was exactly what he'd wanted. He threw the teen across the room and shoved Marta to the floor, pulled a knife from his boot, slamming it into her braid, pinning her by her hair to the floor.. "Touch me again, and she's gone, Kid," he bellowed, showing the full monster he could be. This was the person that beat Niko to a pulp at her gauntlet. The similarites, the multifaceted nature of the two men in the room gutted her. He really couldn't have picked a better protege.

In the tussle, the gag slid down and she was able to shimmy it over her chin. She had to act before there was yet another repeat of history. "Mick," she purred. "Leave him. He's just a kid. Let them finish. You finish over here." Spot's eyes grew large and she tried not to look, but couldn't keep away as Mick looked down at her. He dove back into her neck. She met eyes with Spot and mouthed, "RUN." She looked to the window raising her eyebrows. "GO," she mouthed, seeing Trout's eyes looking up over the ledge. She fell into making the illusion real for Mick, but where he was head over heels into the fantasy, she was listening to the shouts downstairs, smelling the first wisps of smoke. She watched as he got lost, watched Rudy slip out, watched Trout wave at Spot frantically through the window. She nodded at him, released him, and he backed slowly out of the room, walking like his boots were full of lead. She waited until they were alone, until she couldn't hear anyone moving on the eighth floor anymore to speak. To lift the smoke and mirrors. "Your world is about to come crashing down around you," she purred, not wanting to pull him out too violently.

"It's adorable that you still think you are going to accomplish anything by being here," he chuckled, not raising his head from her skin. Her shirt was ripped open, her chemise torn and he was going lower.

She smirked, even flat on her back she had the upper hand. "I warned you about being a self righteous prick. You're nothing but a manipulative asshole who gets his jollies torturing other people. You bent me, I'll give you that, but I have and always have had people behind me pushing me back upright. Even I thought you won when you took Scat, when you turned him on me, but he was never the only one there. I have a family behind me, holding me up, which is exactly why I will win this. Because you have nothing."

"I think the men downstairs would object to being called nothing," he replied smarmily, running his index finger down her jawline and popping the buttons off the opening of her trousers.

"I think the eight to twelve of them left who are loyal to you are too busy trying to breathe to really care too much about what one woman calls them." The first thick curls of smoke were starting to climb the staircase and weave their way through the eighth floor corridor. The heat from the flames below was pressing up through the floorboards and his confusion pulled a derisive laugh from her. "Can't you feel it? Your little Tenement of Dreams is on fire, Mr Mickelson ." She grinned at him brilliantly. He looked up at the haze that was creeping up on them and ran to the stairwell and stared down at the flames licking up and the men already collapsed below, before very slowly returning to stand over her. "Rudy has the rest of them down in the street in case you try to run. They'll be waiting to take you out. I have your second, I have your mistress, I have your protege and I had your madame by my side until she sacrificed herself to make sure you thought you were winning. She was wrong about one thing though, I'm not your weakness. You are. You're cocky, just like every goddamned, idiotic street boy on a power trip before you. You were just bested by a housekeeper, a kid and a whore and we set your whole twisted, sick Dockside world on fire. I have boys dousing the Fox and your house in kerosene as we speak. Your empire is dead and your reign over my city is over."

He dropped over her, straddling her again. "I don't lose," he said absently.

"There's a first time for everything, Toots."

"No." He turned his too light, dusty, worn blue eyes on her, and saw the same ferocity he turned in both Niko and Spot in her presence before. "If I'm going down, I'm having what I've waited ten years for."

The smoke was getting thick, and she pretended that it was the reason for the tears prickling at the backs of her eyes and the thick feeling in her throat that wouldn't let her swallow and not her absolute dread that the last thing she would be in this world was a second time victim of Donovan Mickelson. This was the cost of everyone else's freedom, her life. Clarice was brave enough to do it, Darcy was brave enough to get herself beat to a pulp while her father and her friend listened in the next room. It was her turn. Like Clarice said, she couldn't do it alone. "Then do it," she gritted out. She coughed heavily as smoke burned her nose and lungs and sweat beaded under her breasts and in her hairline as the heat under the floor continued to build. He shoved her chemise up but as his hand slid down into her pants a swish of purple velvet behind his head caught her attention and cut off her cry of protest. There was a metallic flash and a crack and her world went black.

She opened her eyes slowly and thought it was snowing, white flurries fell down on her face, but the sky was wrong for snow. Instead of the woolen grey blanket of snow clouds, the sky boiled, brown and orange, moving and rolling over the top of her. She wished for a clear night, with a velvety winter sky to stare at. The sounds of people yelling and some sort of strange crackling sound wafting through the air. Her head pounded listening to it all. She stared serenely up at the buildings rising around her and tried to make sense of it all. "Hey, boys, her eyes are open," Darcy's bittersweet voice yelped.

Spot's carved and stitched face came into view as she slowly rolled herself up to sitting. "I'm pretty sure I told you to run," she croaked.

"Yeah, well, you always said I was better at giving orders than taking them," Spot sassed with a pained smirk, wincing against the stitches.

She looked at Trout, "What's your excuse?"

 _Racetrack and Mush. Bad Influences_ , he wrote with a wry grin and she couldn't help but laugh until she noticed that his palms were stained with blood. Her hand shot out and grabbed his, knocking his paper and pencil to the ground.

"Tell me this is Spot's, or yours…or anyone's besides whose I think it is," she demanded in a rasping, frantic whisper. "What happened Trout?" He looked sharply away, his face paling.

"Darcy hit him with Clarice's cane," Spot answered, his voice soft and tired, "and I'll be damned if she didn't have the hilt of that knife weighted so it packed a harder punch, and he fell forward and knocked skulls with you and you was out." He watched Trout carefully, they both did, as he sucked into himself and away from them. "I grabbed Darcy and hauled her out. Trout was trying to get the knife Mick had your hair pinned down with out of the floor without cutting your hair off when he came to."

"My hair?" She reached for her braid and found her hair cut off and hanging above her shoulders. Her breath drew in sharply and she tried to stop herself from bawling over something so silly after they day they all endured, but she couldn't help it. Her long hair was her middle finger to the Reverend Mother who cut it off over and over in an attempt to break her as a child. Having it shorn off again was a swift kick to her already tattered and bloodied self worth. Trout looked at her shoes, his blue eyes unable to meet hers as he reached into his pocket and pulled out her braid and held it out to her. She took the shiny rope and stroked it, fingering the jute tie at the end. She smiled sadly at it, her lip trembling. "Thank you, she whispered.

"He kicked Trout away from you and was gonna…" the meaning of the pregnant, uncomfortable pause was not lost on anyone. Mick made his intentions with her clear from the beginning to anyone who would listen about it. She looked down, noticing that she now wore the shirt that Nips entered the tenement wearing. She was thankful that the boys thought of her modesty while she was out. "And I dunno I just snapped, pulled the knife out of the cane and took Mick out. Put the knife in his back." At that, Trout finally looked struck and hustled to the end of the alleyway where he emptied the meager contents of his stomach. "He didn't do it. He just pulled Mick offa you."

"But he's dead? Really dead?" she asked shakily.

"Really dead, and so are most of the guys who would try to keep the gang going," Darcy wheezed quietly as she stood. "We's free, Marta, really free." Marta's eyes were burning again, she couldn't seem to get her emotions under control. Darcy smiled as she watched the older girl struggle for composure. "I'm gonna go find my pops." Spot watched her walk away with a look Marta hadn't seen on his face before and couldn't help the smile of wonderment that graced her bruised and sooty face.

"So thats what it takes to get your attention?" she asked, smiling through her sniffles, grateful for the distraction. "A bad attitude, a snotty mouth and no one else to talk to for two weeks? I'll have to let the sweet little factory girls from next door who come over looking for a date with bad boy Spot Conlon know what the criteria is next time they come a'knocking. Knowing they have no chance will be an easier let down than the one you give them the next day." She looked up at him, batting her eyelashes and smiling.

He grinned and blushed deeply. "Shaddup, Marta."

 _A/N: A big thank you to Joker is Poker with a J for planting the idea of burning them to the ground in my head in one of her reviews! I honestly never planned the ending of this, I never knew how it was going to turn out, because I tend to freak myself if I plan things out, the constrictive nature of having a plan just squiggs me out and I abandon ship. I really hope I did it justice. Hopefully I didn't let you down! Helloooo to new reviewer coveredinbees! I'm so honored to have you as a reviewer as I've been slobbering all over your story Guilt since you started it! And to livelearnlovesing, my ever faithful reviewer, gosh it makes my day to see your reviews, to know that you're still hanging in there! Joker, MUAH! Wet sloppy mouth kisses to you, my penpal/soulmate._


	26. Chapter 26

Five days. For five days, she woke, ran a brush through her shorn hair before attacking it with hairpins to try to make it look like anything decent, dressed in her ladylike clothes and started breakfast for the boys. She woke them and sent them on their way to sell. She swept the floors and she scrubbed the washroom; she went through every bit of the mind numbing routine that made her happy only two weeks beforehand. As soon as she completed her morning work she left and caught a trolley to Williamsburg and stood outside of Most Holy Trinity. She stared up at her old home waiting for that shiver of dread to run through her. She wanted to feel the fear, the foreboding sense that the Reverend Mother was gong to snatch her off the sidewalk or that the sanctuary itself would open its huge doors and swallow her up. But she felt nothing. In truth, she hadn't felt anything since she and the boys limped home from the tenement. Once the relief wore off that they all made it out, that Mick was never coming back and that Rudy fully disbanded the remainder of Dockside, once everyone's cuts and scrapes and bruises were attended to and clean and the gravity of what they just did began to sink in, it was like a void opened up inside of her. It sucked away all of the grief that she knew she should feel about the men died in the abandoned tenement, the anger at Clarice's suicide and even her hope that anything better was out there for her. So she went to the one place that always got a reaction out of her and waited all afternoon to feel something, anything. She stayed as long as she could outside the gates, sometimes entering and standing in the back until she had to go make a meager supper and teach lessons and rode the trolley back to Poplar St.

When she was home she stayed away from the boys as much as she could because when she was around them, she could feel them watching her, waiting for her to break. Trout and Spot were the worst, maybe just because they were both already such watchers, but even Nips and Pickle who were the opposite of people watchers noticed her withdrawn state and watched her a little more closely. So she stayed away and she went through the motions, trying to find that happiness and fulfillment she used to find in this life.

While she was an empty shell, Spot spent any free time he had sitting on the roof, not really trusting himself to be around the other boys and Trout had almost completely sucked into himself. He hadn't spoken a word or made a hand sign since they returned. He hadn't really communicated at all beyond a stiff nod or a slight shake of the head. So when someone knocked at her door but didn't answer her flat, "Who is it?" except to knock again, she was interested. "Come on in, Trout."

He slipped in, hands in his pockets, head down, hair in his eyes and the sight took her back to another time. A time when a seven year ran away from her, afraid to be seen by anyone. That little boy rarely looked up, rarely had his hands out of his pockets and had no way to tell anyone anything besides answering yes and no questions. It was Scat and Spot who drew him out; she only gained his trust when she was the one to teach him to read and write. He stood there in her sitting room, shuffling his feet and looking up at her through his enviably thick eyelashes and she smiled hollowly thinking about the little boy he once was. "How ya holding up kid?" she asked, but was answered with only a shrug. "Yeah, me too." She reached out and brushed her hand against his elbow and he leaned into it. "It feels like nothing could ever possibly be right ever again." He nodded, but then glowered past her for a moment before slamming his fist against the door and sliding down to draw his knees up to his chest. "What's going on in that head of yours?" she asked, sinking down beside him, her skirt a pool of deep green around her. "I'm not Spot; I've always needed help when it comes to you." His glare intensified as she said Spot's name.

 _My friend gone,_ he signed. He jerked his head upward, _not Spot._

"What do you mean that's not Spot, of course it is," she admonished. Their friendship had been instant and lasting. Through all of Spot's bravado and swagger, Trout stuck around. Through other times when Spot's mouth and past got away with him, Trout never wavered, often showing what a fierce friend and a kind heart he was in those dark times. But this time was different. Spot went too far. What Trout experienced wasn't just an undeserved soaking or some verbal abuse. His best friend cut him deep and cut the trust between them.

He shook his head solemnly. _My friend,_ he paused and mulled over how to say what he wanted. He started making violent stabbing motions with his hand and then covered his face squeezing his eyes shut tightly.

"Your friend, the Spot you know, wouldn't kill someone. And you watched him stab Mick. And you know about Niko, and Trots and even Clarice. And you can't trust that this new person, the Spot who would kill is still the guy you've know most of your life." He looked at her in wonder as she said exactly what he was thinking but couldn't adequately express.

There was a bump against the other side of the door and another body slid down to lean against it. "He tell you I held him out a window yet?" Spot's voice asked quietly through the door. Trout growled under his breath and his face hardened.

Marta sighed, "Do you want to come in and talk with us?" She was too tired for this, too numb to deal with their feelings. Her head hurt, her forehead was still black and blue from where Mick's hit hers. She just wanted to keep moving, not dwell and remember.

"Nope," he answered, "better if I'm out here. Did he tell you that part yet? I wouldn't trust me either." Trout slammed his elbow against the door and Spot grunted. "Ow, easy on the goods, Trout!" He was quiet for a moment and she knew that he was shaking his bangs out of his eyes and reaching up to scrub his face, especially after the hiss of pain he let out and the long string of whispered curses.

"Stop touching your face," she admonished. "Its going to get infected and fall off."

"Me face is gonna fall off, really Marta?" he asked sarcastically. She felt her lips quirk instinctively into a small smile, even though nothing stirred in her heart or mind. She was empty of everything that she knew of that made her who she was. "Tell her Trout," Spot prodded. "Tell me. Its all so mixed up in my head and I dunno what was real and what was….crazy."

Trout closed his eyes and opened his mouth. "He…we fight."

"Why?" she asked quietly and Trout struggled for an answer.

"Because he was there!" Spot growled. "I couldn't stop!" They both heard the ragged breath he took. " Trout, I couldn't stop. You know I wouldn'ta done it if I coulda stopped. I just killed Clarice and I was so messed up from Mick and Darcy…."

"You didn't kill Clarice. She went into that apartment knowing she would die there. Rudy sent Mick in after her, they both knew the whole time. Her dying was all part of their plan to let Mick think he was still winning." A shiver ran through her spine. She understood why they didn't tell her, that they needed her reaction to be authentic for Mick to buy it, but it didn't make Clarice's death easier to accept. She needed that friend. She had thoughts of them having lunch together and going out for drinks after this was all over. She hadn't had a friend her own age and gender since Constance, when she left the Convent school.

"What about the others?" he demanded, not even taking a moment to consider what she said. "What about Niko and Trots? I really think Niko might have been dead…his eyes weren't right. No one left that floor but us when the first broke out, what if I killed Trots." He sounded more caring than she ever heard him, not bothering to mask his pain.

Suddenly she couldn't sit anymore, her body jittered and vibrated with something that she couldn't name. "He deserved it! They all did! He was scum! They all deserved it, the bastards! Who follows a man who steals kids and tortures them? How could they knowingly stay so long knowing what he was?" She paced the room, nervously rubbing her palms against her thighs.

"You ain't talking about Niko no more, Kiss," Spot said, his voice quiet and careful.

"Don't call me that!" she snapped. "It's Marta now. For good." She slipped the key off of her neck and dropped it. It fell with a hard clunk to the floor and neither of them reached for it. "Kisser is the past and the past is over."

The boys were afraid to move and breathe for a moment before Spot quietly said, "You still ain't talking about Niko. Youse talking about Scat." Marta stopped, struck and still, but Trout burst off the floor with a gasp and a muttered curse like a fire was lit under him and flew out the door, removing the support from behind Spot's back and sending him sprawling. He returned and stepped over a still cursing Spot without giving him a second glance and shoved a heavy piece of fine paper into Marta's hand and shoved it until she came out of her daze and read it. With every word her eyes got bigger before she dropped it and ran from the room and back out the front door.

"What was that, Trout?" Trout kicked the wad of paper over to him and stuck his hands back into his pockets. Spot read his own pointed chicken scratch telling Trout about Scat's trove of notes at the convent and sighed. He stared at Trout, willing him to look up and talk to him, even if it was only with his eyes, but Trout refused. "Its still me. You know I didn't mean what I said."

 _I_ _know,_ he signed without looking up.

"You know but you ain't gonna talk to me or nothing. Youse just gonna shut down and shut me out because I made a mistake? Because your feelings is hurt? Grow up, Tout!" Spot spat hatefully and pushed past, running all the way to the roof. Trout sighed and dragged his feet all the way to the bunk room where he climbed into his bed to lay down but lie awake all night. He couldn't sleep since they'd been back. He was haunted by the laugh that came out of his best friend, the weight of Mick's body as he pulled him off of Marta, the slip of blood in his hands. But especially the plunge of his stomach as his upper body hung helplessly out the window. He would never go on a rooftop again without that feeling of dread in his gut or a cold sweat covering his body.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Nips sat behind the desk with his feet on the blotter, doodling all over Marta's register, knowing full well that both acts would piss her off, when the door opened and a tiny wisp of a blonde girl with a grey coat over her sage green dress slipped in the door. He pulled his great, long legs down and sat up. "Darcy, right?" She nodded miserably, not meeting his eyes. "He's probably on the roof. Try not to sneak up on him, couplea the boys got fresh shiners from making that mistake."

"Is he ok?" she asked, her sharp little voice sounding meek. She tugged at her coat that was obviously new, looking so uncomfortable in her own skin that he felt bad for her.

"I don't think he's supposed to be ok right now." His brown eyes were soft as he smiled.

"You's probably right," she said with a tight smile before heading to the stairs and up to the roof.

He sat in the corner, no coat despite the small, icy snowflakes that the cold wind pelted him with. His feet were stockinged and his big toe stuck out of a hole in them. He didn't see her, he was lost in his thoughts, so she snuck back down to the upstairs hallway and wandered up and down looking for a linen closet or coat cupboard. She found herself in the quiet bunk room, empty except for herself and one top bunk that held a curled up figure. "Heya Trout," she said quietly to the large boy. He raised his head and stared at her through shadowed eyes that hadn't seen sleep in a few days. He raised an eyebrow at her. She smiled shyly and pointed along the row of bunks, "Can you help me find Spot's, please?" He sighed and swung his legs off the bed, jumping down with a thump that she felt in her feet. He went to the wall and grabbed a coat and hat off of the a hook and handed them to her. "You know how much he talked about you when he was with me?" she asked as he pulled the grey wool blanket off of Spot's bunk and folded it carefully. "He said you was like his brother, told me about all the trouble you two used to get into as kids." She smiled, her bruises were fading and she was pretty when she smiled. "He trusts you with his life, you know that?" He looked up at her through his eyelashes as he handed over the blanket.

"Its you turn," he mumbled. "That…that's past." He climbed back up to his bunk and turned his back to her. She didn't understand what he meant, she figured she didn't hear him right and would ask Spot about it, so she thanked him for his help and left him alone.

When she got back to the roof she stood silently watching him for a few moments, hoping he would notice her. When he didn't she called to him softly, "Spot?" He jumped to his feet ready to fight and breathing heavily. She didn't dare move until he straightened up. He was panting and sweating despite his purple lips and cold nipped face. "You ok?" she called from her place by the roof access door, still afraid to step forward.

"Yeah,"he groaned, sinking back down. She approached cautiously ad plopped his grey cap onto his head. It didn't fit as well as the one he lost the day Niko attacked him and fell over his eyes. He righted it as she draped his coat over his shoulders and dropped the blanket over his lap.

"Whattaya doing up here all alone? Trying to catch your death?" she asked as she sat down.

"I like the cold, it lets me know what's what. And I ain't trying to catch nothing, just keeping me boys safe." Despite his words, he pulled his arms into the sleeves of his coat and pulled it tightly around himself.

She scrunched her nose, "Safe from what? Dockside is gone. The threat is gone, your boys is safe Spot."

"From me," he said in a voice that was more vibrations than sound. She had to clasp her hands tightly in her lap to keep the one closest to him from seeking his to hold onto. She was afraid that her touch would turn him feral again, that she'd end up alone on a roof with the beast that killed Mick.

She rubbed her palms together and tried to change the subject, "Your face is healing good. The scar wont be too bad." His hand darted out from under the blanket and captured hers, drawing it in and sandwiching it between his icy palms.

"I dunno know how to do this," he mumbled, not looking up. "They all know what I did, how I was in there. They ain't looking at me the same. They used to respect me, now they's just scared."

"Me neither," she answered, placing her other hand onto of his. "My sisters expect me to be like I was when I left, but its not like I spent the last five years at finishing school doing needlepoint! Everything I say and how I say it is wrong. My mother looks at me like I'm a roach in the kitchen. She knows what I am now."

"What you _was_ never bothered me none. And you ain't doing it no more. You can do whatever else you want now, Kid." She loved that it didn't bother him and that he emphasized 'was'. It was a solid truth of their…friendship. She was Mick's whore, paid in room and board, and he didn't lie. He fully believed that she could do whatever else she wanted now that she was free.

"To them, I'm just a broken woman, ruined. They can't marry me off because…well, I'm damaged goods." She sighed and rested her head against his shoulder and furrowed her brow, "You been eating? Your shoulder is like cuddling a plumbing fixture." He scowled at her as he wrapped a lanky arm and the flap of his coat around her and she dropped it. "I ain't skilled in nothing useful, so I guess I'll just go work in a factory and hope for the best."

"Yeah, I'll probably ending up unloading at the docks," he said listlessly. "Trout won't even look me in the face. I can see it on his face when I'm around, all he sees is me holding him out the window, or stabbing Mick. He can't find me behind what he saw at the tenement."

She shrugged, unsure whether it was ok to tell him what she was thinking or not. She always had before, but telling him about his own best friend seemed like it might be crossing a boundary. "I'd have a hard time facing you if you put me through a window. After the first time Mick really let me have it, I cried every time he was in the house for weeks."

He scoffed, "Yeah, but youse a girl. Trout's a man, he don't get to go crying and hiding under his bed…"

"But he feels things different than you do. He ain't you, all shut down inside. That boy has his heart on his sleeve and trust is important to him."

"Trust is important to me!" he squawked, but pulled her closer rather than pushing her away.

"Shut up," she snapped. "Loyalty is important to you and that's different."

"They's the same damn thing!"

"They is not! Loyalty is a one was street, trust goes both ways." She giggled at the shocked look on his face. "Its gotta go both ways for him, Spot. You never really hurt him before, but now that you have, youse gonna have to show him that he can trust you again and that you trust him."

He sat, his mouth hanging open, his eyes wide and glassy. "Did you tell me to shut up?"

She smirked, "I sure did." She leaned into him harder, "And I'll do it again and again, anytime youse being stupid." He found himself smiling as he turned her hand over in between his. He kissed her fingertips, they were still warmer than his lips. He leaned down and drew warmth from her lips, her warmth was the only warmth he trusted.

 _A/N: Don't be surprised if the last chapter shows up later today or tomorrow. I'm so sad its over, but at the same time I really want to go write the epilogue! PLEASE review! I'm dying here, don't kill me with your lack of response please!_


	27. Chapter 27

A bleak, watery sun rose from the horizon as the train rattled across New Jersey. They sat in the coach car, the two younger ones together on the one bench and she sat across from them, dozing as the motion of the train moving down the rails rocked her back and forth. They were headed west, without so much as a goodbye. She left her notice under the door at the Children's Aide Society in the middle of the night and gathered her things before waking Spot and Trout and handing them tickets. At first, they looked at her like she was crazy, which she was thinking might be true, honestly. She blew almost all of her savings on those tickets, leaving enough for a few months rent when they got to wherever felt like home. But they packed their things and followed her to the train station in the wee hours of the morning. The movement and the noise of the train was almost enough to lull her to sleep, but she wouldn't let herself sleep.

She stared at Spot, who looked blankly out the window. They were all a sight, with their bruises and cuts that were in different phases of healing. There was no way for her to hide the vicious bite mark on her neck, even leaving her hair down didn't cover it and his face drew stares from all around the car. Little did they know that those stitches were the least of his injuries. She wondered if he would put all of his pieces back together eventually or if he would be forever a little more damaged because of Mick. He looked over at her and curled his lips up in a sad impression of a smile and she returned it, looking to the tiny blonde who was curled up on the seat next to him, sound asleep. He stroked her hair absently and Marta couldn't help the real smile that graced her tired face. Him seeking out touch from someone else was rare, but he was always touching her when she was around, as if her touch kept him grounded. "I still don't get how he got her there," he murmured, looking down at Darcy.

She smiled, thinking of Trout and the switch he pulled on them that morning. He was all set to go with them, or so they thought, but then Darcy showed up and he grinned, gently pushing her towards Spot and handing her his ticket. "He never planned on coming, but its not in him to argue. He's full of surprises, that one." She figured he pulled the same disappearing act he did the night that he found the Brownstone, only this time he slipped off and found Rudy's flat and managed to wake Darcy. He willingly gave up his own ticket to make sure that the person who could make Spot happy went with them. Mad or not, he thought of Spot first, like he always did.

"Why wouldn't he come? Its always been him and me." He shifted uncomfortably and looked out the window, "He's the one who can always…"

"He can't live his life to be your shadow. He deserves his own life and he'd never have it with you still around. He was so different while you were gone. He was talking, Spot, in front of anyone and he smiled, grinned. I've known that boy since he was seven and I could count the times I saw him look truly happy on one hand until these past few weeks. As much as he was so good for you, I'm not sure you're good for him. Its time to let him stretch his wings a bit." He stared at her like a child who got slapped, and she felt bad for being too blunt. He was so fragile and she wasn't used to having to temper the truth for his sake. He learned so many horrible things about himself that he didn't really seem to know what to do. It was so odd to see him vulnerable and brought down to human status. "The bad times will fade as we have better times, and you'll learn to let Darcy and I calm you down. Eventually, you'll get back to normal, like before."

He nodded, twisting a piece of Darcy's cornsilk blonde hair in between his fingers. He paled as an unpleasant thought rolled through his head. "What if I hurt you? Like I did him?"

The question had been weighing heavily on her mind for as long as they had been back from the tenement. What would she do if he attacked anyone? It broke her heart to say, but she knew what the right answer was. "I'll call the bulls on you." His attention snapped up and he looked at her in shock, but she stared back calmly, "If you lay a finger on either of us, I will have them come deal with you and then I'll come bail you out the next day." She smirked, "But just to be on the safe side, we'll make sure wherever we stay is on the ground floor. That way it will be a short fall if you decide one of us needs to go out a window."

"That ain't funny," he growled, glowering at her.

"Yeah, I know," she mumbled and stuffed her hands in her coat pockets. His eyes got wide as she pulled the key out.

"You didn't leave it for them?"

She smiled, "Nah, they don't need it. Its just some piece of junk that someone pulled out of the gutter and made up a story about anyway. Those boys can handle anything Brooklyn can throw at them. If the past few weeks served no other purpose, they showed me that Nips and Trout can do anything. They don't need a key around one of their necks to show the boys who the bosses are."

Marta put the key over her head and pulled out the packet of letters that she had pulled from the hollowed base of the convent fence. He watched her with a raised brow and stared at it as she read.

Some of the letters were so full anger and bitterness that she couldn't bear to read them. Some were nearly incoherent, like maybe he went and wrote them after drinking too much. She could just imagine him sitting there against the fence, stinking drunk and trying to write to her. He wasn't the best reader or writer to begin with, most mornings she read the headlines to him so that he was hawking improved headlines and not completely bogus ones. The drunk letters had little bits of left over love, and then a whole bunch of babble. Then she came across one dated in July of 1899, and her heart broke.

 _Kisser,_

 _I hope you's somewheres else walking in the grass with no shoes on. Three days ago I was fighting Spot at the World building. He ambushed the ambush that the bosses at the World planned for da boys. It was crazy. He knew me and I knew him and I had to go after him. Kids a maniac when he gets fired up. Tonight we got called to bust up their rally at Irving Hall. I was the reason Trout got hauled in by the bulls. He was fighting me and I had to call for help and he got clubbed. They hauled him away and I lit it out a there and came here to talk to you. This don't make no sense. This has been the worst week in a long time, second only to the week I lost you._

 _Scat_

She crumpled it in her hand and tried to discreetly wipe a tear away as she stared out the window, but she knew he saw her. She tucked it back into the packet and pulled out another. She couldn't stop the tears as she read. They splashed down onto the paper, smearing the ink.

 _Kisser,_

 _Sometimes I dream that we's out west like you wanted and we's real happy living in the country. But then I realize that I'm watching it all happen. I ain't part of it. The guy you is smiling at ain't me. He's some hayseed with a big smile and a lasso on his hip like in them penny novels for kids about cowboys and injuns. I hope you find your cowboy. I hope youse happier than me._

 _Ted_

She pulled her knees up to her chest and buried her face, crying quietly until the sadness and the lack of sleep and the gentle motion of the train as it moved down the tracks and away from Brooklyn pulled her into a deep sleep. The letter fell to the floor at Spot's feet and he leaned over, careful to not disturb Darcy. His eyes panned over Scat's staggering handwriting and he closed his eyes. "It would have to be a cowboy, wouldn't it," he grumbled and hunkered down to whether the long ride to wherever felt like home.

 _A/N: This is the end. I will have the epilogue out today or tomorrow, and then this story will get the "complete" box checked! You didn't really think I'd end it with everyone sad did you? Endings should always have hope._


	28. Epilogue

Four years later.

The young man stepped out of the wagon and took a deep breath. He took his cap off of his head and felt the dry, cool breeze ruffle through his black hair. He'd never seen a sky like the one above him, the sun in New York City never seemed that bright, nor the heavens so blue. The clouds were so close it felt like he could touch them. The thin air rasped down into his lungs as he stared at the wide open prairie around him. Denver wasn't the cow town in the mountains that he'd imagined it would be, but the tiny town of Kiowa that the wagon he'd hired took him through was most certainly a cow town. Dirt streets, wooden sidewalks, it was straight out of one of Jack Kelly's cowboy books.

The sprawling ranch in front of him was beautiful in a rustic, austere kind of a way. The cold, golden brown prairie spread out around him, interrupted by split rail fences made from the tall thin lodgepole pines that grew in dense groves around the edges of the cleared land. It was February and the far away peaks of the Rockies were white. The bright sun and blue sky did nothing to take the chill out of the icy wind that swept through the grass. He pulled his coat tighter around himself as he knocked on the front door of the white clapboard farmhouse. The door slammed open and he stepped out of the way so as not to be knocked over by the duo of little boys to run out of it, screaming at the top of their lungs and chasing each other off into the tall grass. "That's right, get outta here, ya hooligans! Go run it off, or better yet, get to the barn and do your chores like I done asked you twelve other times today!" A tall blonde man sauntered out of the house after them with a lazy sort of smile his face, like that was just the way his face rested, in a half smile. He leaned against the doorframe and his deep brown eyes, surveyed his land before coming to rest on the younger man on his porch. "Can I help you?" The smile never faltered, even with a stranger on his porch so far out in the country. If it weren't for the different coloring and the intact teeth, he almost looked like Scatter. But then again he didn't. He just had that same charismatic, buddy-buddy charm that Scatter had. _Scatter's charm and motherless little boys_ , the younger man thought, _getting Marta to fall for him must have been like catching fish in a barrel_.

With a deep breath and a shove down of the nervous butterflies in his stomach he quietly said, "I-I'm looking for Marta F-Fletcher and Spot Conlon." Instead of two syllables, Conlon came out a Con-a-lon. He spoke slowly, each word carefully curated and cautiously executed.

"She went to visit the neighbors, so she ain't here," the man said, squinting off into the distance. He felt himself deflate until a low chuckle rumbled out of the blonde man, "No need to fret, son, she ain't gone for good. She'll be back. Come on in, she and Darcy will be back soon…at least I hope they will, I'm not sure those youngins will take kindly to going back to their dear old dad's cooking after Marta and Darcy been spoiling them these past few years." A sudden look of mock horror crossed his face and the visitor understood how his old friend fell for the cowboy in front of him. He smiled softly, for what felt like the first time in ages. The blonde looked the dark haired kid on his porch up and down. "Winslow Fletcher, but everyone calls me Fletch." He held his hand out and the younger man shook it.

"Eli Cooper. She'd call me T-t…" He winced, he was tired from the long journey and his mouth was getting sticky.

"Trout. I knew you the second I saw you, its the eyes. They talk about you a lot, never thought I'd get to meet you though. Both her and Spot were pretty sure that you were never leaving New York." Eli blushed and nodded and Fletch waved him inside the house.

"Where's Spot?" Eli asked, following the cowboy into the house and looking around warily. While there were obviously parts of the house that were there before her, this was Marta's home. Her touches were everywhere. The way the little boys' shoes were lined up next to the door under a coat in a similar size, it was just like the bunkroom. He felt the eyes and the easy-going smile on him.

"Out fixing a fence, he'll be back when his stomach starts growling." Eli looked confused and Fletch chuckled again, "Damn if she wasn't right about your face! It says everything you need it to!" Again he blushed, not used to any sort of attention, he was used to making sure he blended in, didn't bring attention to himself. "He looked around like that the first time they came here too, like the walls were going to jump down and get him. I promise, you're safe here."

Another thing Fletch was like Scatter about, making him feel at home. It made him even more uneasy, so he changed the subject. "Spot doesn't get hungry."

Fletch laughed, loud and rolling, showing Eli to a couch in a big room. "I met that kid. Scrawny, mouthy, mean, never ate nothing. Yup, I remember him. He ain't here no more, I put that kid to work. I think you'll be very interested in meeting Spot Conlon, now. But you settle in here, I'll go make us some coffee while we wait for the girls to get back." The warm chenille of the sofa, the soft cushion and the general feeling of homeyness from Marta's little touches all over the place: a rocking chair on a rag rug by a fire place with a basket of mending within reach. Hairpins, single hairpins on every surface because sometimes she just couldn't deal with them stabbing her in the skull. It was all so comfortable, so right, so what he needed to feel that he let out a deep sigh and was asleep in mere moments.

He woke to a quiet giggle and someone prying his eyelid open with tiny fingers. He clamped them closed as his brain tried to figure out what was happening. "Hey!" A male voice rang out, much harsher than the cowboy's. "What did I tell you, huh? Quit that and get outta here before I tell your muddah what youse doing." Eli would know that voice anywhere and his lips smiled even though his eyes weren't open yet. The owner of the giggle ran away on quick, tiny feet. "You awake? Or smiling in ya dreams, sleeping beauty?"

"'M awake," he mumbled forcing his eyelids open.

"Holy shit!" Spot jumped back in surprise, tripping over his own feet and falling to the floor. To be honest, if he weren't sitting down, he would have too. The man before him was not his lanky, slight friend. If it weren't for the voice and the silvery grey-blue eyes, Eli wouldn't have recognized him at all. He was tanned, his hair bleached to an ashy blonde in the harsh mountain sun and the scar on his face from the tenement was jagged pink line across his forehead and down his cheek. While he wasn't broad, like he himself always had been (built like a brick shit house was Racetrack's favorite expression, which Eliot found about as charming as a brick shit house), he looked healthy, muscular and nothing like the skinny kid he grew up with. "Trout? That is you, right?" Spot asked in a small voice. He looked around a bit shiftily.

"It's me."

"Yeah, that don't help." Spot swallowed loudly, still sitting on the floor. Eliot scooted forward to sit on the edge of the couch cushion and grinned before throwing every curse word hand sign and dirty gesture they ever made up, ending with "asshole." Spot grinned, not just his signature smirk, but an honest-to-god grin, and jumped up from the floor, yanking his old friend to his feet. Eliot tensed as Spot pulled him close, he half expected to be put in a choke hold, but instead he was hugged. A low, throaty but decidedly female chuckle caught their attention.

"Hard work agrees with him, don't you think, Trout?" Marta asked. He spun and ran to her, squeezing her tightly. She easily hugged him back, and he felt everything that was making him miserable, everything he held in, every wall he built up inside get let go. Tears were in his eyes and he squeezed them shut trying to make them stop, but instead they flowed more freely. His chest and throat got tight and soon he was sobbing and didn't exactly understand why. Marta smiled, she only came up to his shoulder now. She guided his head down and stroked his hair, just like she did the first day she met him. He was always one to tuck his troubles away, and they always got too big and exploded. "It can't be that bad," she whispered in his ear, turning them so they could sit again on the couch.

When he was calm, he wiped his face and pulled away. "I'm sorry I didn't write." She grinned broadly and Spot did too, coming up and crouching on the floor in front of them. He felt himself smiling even through the tears that were still falling realizing that this was the first time either of them heard him say more than a few stuttered words. "Oh, yeah. You like that?"

Spot looked at the amazed look on Marta's face and said, "Crazy, right?" with a bemused smile on his scarred face. "He's the damned slowest talking New Yorker alive."

"How?" She asked, her hand never leaving the crook of his elbow, knowing how touch always soothed him.

"Practice," Eli sniffled. "Lots of p-p-practice." They looked at him like he walked on water. "I get stuck, still. Can't make the right word happen. And th-th-the…."

"Stutter," Marta and Spot said together. He nodded and sniffled again. Marta cleared her throat and pushed the hair back off of his brow, smiling as she took inventory of the boy she raised, all grown up. "You're like a real grown up, I can't believe it." His hair was neatly trimmed in the back, but longer on top and in front.

He smiled, that soft smile that was as far as most of his ever got, those brilliant grins of his still rare and beautiful. "You didn't expect me to be?"

It was her turn to blush, and he realized how much like herself, like Kisser, she looked. The sun bleached her hair back to it's cinnamon color and the dry air made her curls wild and fuzzy. Her freckles were darker and her skin more pink. "Of course I did. Its just that the last time I saw you, you weren't talking and you looked so….broken." Her eyes got distant and he knew she was realizing they were all three so broken then. She sniffed and looked back at him with a tight smile. "Your hair looks nice, thats how I always wanted to cut it, but you never would let me." He reached up and rubbed the back of his neck, the short hair scratching against his knuckle, and nodded his thanks. He didn't trust his mouth to cooperate with all of the emotion that was rushing through his head so swiftly. "You haven't come to me like that and just let loose except for three times. What's wrong?" she asked. His eyes dropped immediately. He hated how well she knew him, that he was so predictable. The only other times he ever let her comfort him were the first day he met her, when she pulled him off of Spot while trying to beat him senseless, that last day at the lodging house and one time after the strike, when he thought he would die from being so sad.

Spot snickered and stood up, "She's still got it, my friend. Make no mistake about that. She's still got the faces that make you want to shit your pants too. Just ask the kiddies." Eli's eyebrows furrowed. "Oh, you ain't met everyone yet? Fletch! Whatsamattah with you?" Spot hollered.

Fletcher came to the door between the parlor and another room, one sandy eyebrow cocked up. "Boy, I married your sister," Trout looked at Marta questioningly and she shook her head slightly and used his old sign for later discretely, "not you. It might have escaped your notice over the past few years, but this is the Fletcher Ranch, not the Conlon ranch. You best watch who you talk to like that." Eliot felt his body tense, watching his old friend, waiting for the pounce, the attack, but Marta's hand tightened on his arm, pulling his attention back to her. She smiled and shook her head before nodding back to the two men, still talking in the middle of the room.

Spot didn't look ready to fight, he looked relaxed. "Sorry, I just thought you'd introduce the rugrats to my best friend."

His heart was pounding in his chest and he knew how Spot felt hearing him speak in full sentences. He stood quickly and backed away, not sure if this was all real or not. Maybe he was still asleep. Maybe he was still on the train, hell, maybe he was still in his apartment in New York. "Hey, hey, hey," Marta said, standing up, moving with him, "He's different. Its a big change but its for the better. You can see that right?" He nodded, unable to keep his eyes from moving wildly around the unfamiliar room. "Talk to me, Kid. Look at me. Tell me whats going on in that head of yours."

He tried, he opened his mouth and closed it over and over trying to get the words to come out. So he used what he knew. "He hugged me," he signed. "He apologized." Spot didn't do either of those things. Ever.

She laughed, "He apologized because he was being an ass, so that hasn't changed."

"And your Trouty mouth sure ain't changed. Ya still look like a fish outta wattah," Spot called over.

"Not helpful!" Marta called back, but Trout found himself laughing and began to breathe again. "Ok, maybe helpful." She gave him a moment to recover before touching his arm again, "Do you want to meet the little ones? And then we'll have some supper. I know Spot and Will won't be able to go much longer without food." Eli looked over at Spot and raised his dark eyebrows and Spot just grinned sheepishly. "Those two eat like the horses." He nodded and she took his hand to lead him back to the couch. "Fletcher, my friend, would you call in the troops?"

"Friend? Are we friends?" he asked with a goofy grin.

"I like to think I married my best friend," she answered with a charming smile.

"Yeah" Spot teased, standing up with a wicked look on his face, "but he likes to think he married a prize heifer!" but still yelped as she took off after him.

Eli looked at Fletcher, questioning with his face. Fletch snickered. "Now that is a funny story…"

"Winslow Fletcher, don't you dare tell him that story or I will knock your teeth in and bury you in the creek bed!" Marta shrieked from the other room where the sounds of some sort of scuffle rang out.

There was a clang and a clatter, and a higher pitched shriek. "Will you two get outta here before you destroy my kitchen?" Darcy yelled. "You's worse than the kids. Out! Damn street rats! You two need your own mother!" Spot and Marta raced back out of the kitchen and out the front door into the grass like children.

"Welp, now that she's not here being scary," Fletcher said waggling his sandy eyebrows with a mischievous twinkle in his eyes, "I can tell you. Spot was teaching my boys to shoot with a slingshot when we were staying at the boarding house that Marta was running in Denver when I took some stock to auction. In return, Will wanted to show her to rope." His lazy, happy smile grew wide. "I came back early and saw them. Will ain't bad with a lasso, but Marta was just….terrible." His head tipped back and he laughed again, loud and rolling. Eli couldn't even picture Marta swinging a rope around like Jack used to do. "I snuck up behind her and roped her, drug her ten feet or so, kicking and screaming the whole way, and then I stole a kiss when I picked her up off her duff."

"She punch you?" Eli asked, already knowing the answer.

A deep crimson blush crawled up the cowboy's bronze neck, "Sure did! Split my lip, made Jesse cry." He smiled again, "Best damn thing I ever managed to rope. A wild woman is just what this old place needed to bring it back to life." He looked at the burly boy at his side, who looked in awe and lost all at the same time. "You know you're welcome to stay for as long as you like. We got plenty of space and plenty of work to go around. There are few problems that I've come across, that a man can't work through in his head, so long as his body keeps busy." Eli's brow furrowed and he shook his head slightly. "Its no bother, no imposition. The way I understand it, you're family and this family takes care of each other." Eli looked up at him through his eyelashes and nodded his thanks. He could talk now, but he still didn't if he could convey what he wanted without it. "Why don't you go see if Darcy needs any help while I go gather up the kids….the little and big ones." They both grinned and he made his way towards the room he heard Darcy shrieking from.

"Heya Darcy," he said from the doorway after watching the tiny but powerful blonde bustle around the kitchen for a few moments.

She turned with a brilliant smile and squealed. "Trout!" She put down the bowl she was stirring and ran to him, launching her small, but very round and pregnant body at him. He squeezed her gently. They were only around each other a few times, but their connection to Spot somehow made their friendship easy. She pulled away and smiled up at him. She was breathtaking now that she was happy, not the dusty, disused girl he first met in the streets. "You didn't stick around long enough at the train station for me to thank you. You saved me, you know that? I dunno what I would've done if I'd woken up that morning and he was gone. He was the only one who understood…"

He stopped her, pushing his hands out flat in between them. "He needed you. I couldn't be there anymore."

"Yeah, I could see that. I didn't understand what you said until later. That it was my turn." She smiled, "I think I've done a pretty good job during my turn."

"I didn't under…understood…understand what I said then," he said with a small smile. "I just knew I couldn't…couldn't…"

"Trust him," she finished for him. He nodded and she handed him a stack of plates. "Tables over there. No one blames you for not trusting him. It took Marta and I months to get him back to….functioning. And, honestly, I'm not sure normal and Spot will ever be friends." Eli set the table, not missing Darcy's raised eyebrow at his ability to do so properly.

"I cleared tables at a restaurant" he answered. He gestured at her swollen middle with a handful of forks, "Not normal doesn't bother you."

She laughed loudly, "It sure don't!"

"What don't what?" Spot asked, his face covered in dirt and his hair full of straw and debris.

"Your personality don't make me wanna kill you once an hour anymore," she answered dryly. He pinched her side, making her squeak and then bent down, kissing her neck a little longer than was proper.

"Ew," Marta said, equally covered in dirt and straw, "you two have your own house to do that in, don't do it in mine." Spot stood up and gave Marta a dirty look before going to the sink and starting to wash up.

Fletcher was in the other room, with what sounded like a herd of cattle. "Come on now, scrub up good. Your mamas want to see clean shiny faces and hands, not grubby little monsters. Jesse, soap, son. Soap is needed. Will, can you lift your cousin up please?"

"Cousin?" Eli asked. "What's going on?"

Marta stepped up to the sink, smiling back at him. "It was a decision we made on the train. So far as anyone knows, Spot is my little brother. I was Marta Conlon for two years before I met and married Fletch. We just decided it would look better for all of us if we were siblings and Darcy and Spot were already engaged before we stepped off the train in Denver," Eli looked at Spot incredulously.

"Don't give me that look. I know what all of your looks mean, and yes I was crazy. But, that is one crazy decision I stand by." He wrapped his arm back around Darcy and kissed the top of her head.

"Fletch?" Eli asked, jerking his thumb towards the other room.

"He knows the truth, but agrees that its for the best and also agrees that we act too much like it to change the story now," she answered drying her hands. Fletch came up behind her and wrapped his arms around her waist, followed in by four kids. The older two were obviously Fletcher's, with their golden curls and deep brown eyes. Fletch whispered something in her ear and she nodded. "Will and Jesse, this is me and Spot's friend, Eli, from New York." The two older boys, who were ten and seven, shook his hand solemnly.

"Be real, Marta," Spot admonished. "Trout ain't a friend, Trout's family. We grow'd up as brothers, him and me."

Jesse's face screwed up with skepticism, "Your mama named you Trout?"

He smiled tiredly and sat down, he'd spoken more in the past hour than he normally did in a week, "M-my mother called me Eh-eh eliot. Spot called me T-t-tr-trout and I…didn't say different."

"You don't talk funny like Spot and Mama," the younger boy answered stretching a rare and beautiful grin onto Eli's face.

He looked up at Spot and Marta, gleefully happy. "I always thought they talked funny too." The comment earned him a giggle from Marta and Darcy and a scowl from Spot.

The older boy stared at the man he thought of as his uncle, "If Trout's name is really Eliot, does that mean you have two names too? Did your mama really call you Spot?"

He bit his cheeks to keep himself from laughing, "Nope, me muddah called me Ciarán." He looked over at Marta with a wink, "But me sistah called me Spot. She called me it so much that it stuck and I don't answer to nothing else."

"You don't look like brothers and sisters," Jesse said while Will looked at the ground and scuffed his boot back and forth.

"Youse very perceptive," Spot answered crouching down to Jesse's level, like they were sharing a deep secret, just between the two of them, even though everyone else could hear what they said, "but sometimes family ain't just about blood and the same colah eyes, and that goil theah and that big guy are the best family any boy could evah ask foah." The two newsboys grinned at each other as Marta turned around, trying to hide the tearful smile his words brought to her face. "You ain't gotta hide, Marta, me and Trout have know'd you was a big mush since we was little. A big sappy, softy when it comes to ya little lost boys."

But she stayed turned around with Fletcher whispering in her ear until she was calm, but changed the subject, "The big boys are Fletch's from his late wife, but they have graciously allowed me to mother them to death. And this," Marta said, scooping up a chubby curly headed toddler and planting a kiss on his soft cheek, "is Teddy, he's ours together."

Spot grabbed the last child, a young girl about three or four with eyes like ice and hair like cornsilk. "And this beautiful piece of woik is Clarice, Clarice Conlon, and yes, she's who was messing with you while you was sleeping. She's a pistol, just like her mama." Little Clarice glared up at her father with such an uncanny likeness to his own knifepoint glare, pointing her little tipped up nose into the air loftily.

"Just like her dad you mean," Darcy quipped, flicking his ear playfully. "Could the daughter of THE Spot Conlon be anything else?"

Long after supper was eaten and dishes were cleaned, once all of the kids were in bed, Spot, Marta and Eli sat on the farmhouse porch. "Out with it Trout," Marta ordered after a few moments of peaceful silence. "Something is not right with you and I've pussyfooted around it long enough." In the dim lamplight on the porch, she could still see him look up at her through his eyelashes at her as he sat sideways on the steps. "That doesn't work on me and you know it. You show up here after you don't answer my letters for almost a year, you look like hell, fall asleep on my sofa and cry in my arms. Are you sick? Are you dying? What is going on?"

"Marta, shut up for two seconds and let the man talk," Spot said quietly.

"I'm…I'm…not sick. Not d-d-d-dying," he answered. "I n-n-needed my family...and thats you." He was silent for another minute. He'd spent the whole train ride trying to figure out how he would answer this line of questioning. The truth was just too pathetic, but Marta would know if he made something up.

"You still living at the school and bumming around with Blink and Racetrack?" Spot asked. Eli nodded and let out a deep sigh. "That ain't good."

"Yup, thats the deep shit sigh," Marta agreed with a smile in her voice.

"That's the go stare at the island for hours sigh," Spot added and Trout winced. He did that for most of the night before he got on the train…after taking care of most of a bottle of whiskey by himself, but before sleeping outside the door of his parents' flat in Queens.

"You'd write and you're so happy," he mumbled. "Everyone's likes their life and something is m-m-m...not there for me. Race has a girl, a r-r-rich girl, named Clara. He tried to set me up, but they all want more than I got."

"You got way more to offer than Racetrack Higgins," Spot guffawed.

"I don't want... I can't find... I want…"

"You want JoAnna," Spot answered. Eliot had him shoved against the house by his shoulders in moments. They glared at each other and Eliot found himself wishing for the old, volatile Spot. The one who would hit hit and keep on hitting, because the fight and physical pain would fill up the void he felt inside his chest. It would let him feel something besides jealousy and loneliness and sucking, devouring emptiness. But Spot's glare was steady and calm, searing him and watching his thoughts as they raced across his eyes. "Its true, you want that girl from after the strike that ran away. She's the only girl I ever seen turn your head at all. But she's gone, Trout. She's been gone for years. She was always gonna be gone. She was a runner, a flight risk, a traveler. She was never going to be pinned down! It wasn't about you! You've got to let that go!"

"Don't talk about her. She's dead."

"Eli," Marta said, her hand resting gently on Eliot's broad shoulder, "let him down." Her voice was soft, comforting and quiet as she waited, never moving her hand. When she spoke again there was more bite to her voice. "Put him down Trout. He's your friend. You don't want to hurt him. He's an asshole. He's always been an asshole." She shot Spot a dirty look over Trout's broad shoulder, "He always will be an asshole. Put. Him. Down." He turned his head to her, watching her calm, freckled face out of the corner of his bright blue eye. "You don't have to let go of her. You just have to keep watching for someone who makes you feel like she did." He dropped Spot roughly with a huff. Her arm slid down his bicep and snaked around his elbow, gently tugging him back to the steps where she sat down next to him. "You know I understand. You have to know that. You were there while I waited for Scat all those years, waiting for my first love to come back. But he wasn't coming back, and it's likely that JoAnna isn't either." She felt him slump a few inches and smiled sadly. He'd endured so many losses in his short life, rejected by his family and then the guy he thought of as a big brother, JoAnna and then (albeit, by choice) she and Spot, and so many never came back into his life. He felt each one of those losses so profoundly in that tender heart of his. "But you know, your first love is so often not your only love, or even your greatest love. You have plenty more chances for that great one. You're only just twenty one."

"Twenty one years old and you's had what, four or five people you really let in," Spot said, sitting down a few steps lower. "That woiks out to one person every 4-5 years. JoAnna was 6 years ago...so you's due. Stick around here. See if we can't find you a nice farm girl who gets whatever it is that you got going on."

"Who made the list?" she asked, quirking an eyebrow at him, her lips turned up in a curious smile .

Trout tapped Spot with his foot, giving him permission to speak for him. He was so tired, mentally and emotionally, he wasn't sure how long he could keep up conversing without falling into gibberish. "His oldah brothah Jonah, me, Scat, Racetrack and JoAnna."

"What about me?" she asked, unable to hide the hurt in her voice.

"You there," he muttered nudging into her with his shoulder gently.

"You just got there your own way, Marta," Spot answered, nodding a few times before brushing his blonde bangs from his face and staring up at the velvety black sky. "The others, they's like me. They didn't see nothing wrong with him not talking. You took awhile to warm up to him, didn't think he'd make it running with us. You two just wore each other down after awhile."

She smiled, "I never was one to do things any way but my own."

The opportunity arose to lighten the mood and take the focus off of himself and he ran with it. "So, you married a g-g-g-g…..man who roped you like a cow?" His bright blue eyes sparkled as Spot stifled a laugh.

Her hazel eyes flashed as they looked between him and the door before she erupted out of her seat, stamping her foot against the floorboards. "Fletcher! I told you to stop telling people that story about the lasso!" she yelled.

The two newsboys chuckled as she stormed into the house to chastise her husband. They enjoyed the quiet, companionable silence, the clean, sweet, spotless breeze and the cold night air. "We ok, Trout?" Spot asked quietly, as they stared up at the stars that were so bright and plentiful away from the lights of the city.

"Mmhmm. We're good."

 _A/N: There you have it, the final installment of Ants and Giants! This puppy is COMPLETE! I finished it! Happy dance! This epilogue is Trout centric because I've started a companion piece (both prequel and sequel) that is about him, because I love him and he needed a voice. Please tell me what you thought!_


End file.
